THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 

175. 3 
W65cl 


Return  this  book  on  or  before  the 
Latest  Date  stamped  below.  A 
charge  is  made  on  all  overdue 
books. 

U.  of  I.  Library 


riAR  2(> 
fiPR  -6  I84i 


37 


DEC  -6  19^ 


.;■(••  1943 


CCT  2 
DEC  2  0 


991 

m 

m  31 2k)04 


805  7-S 


r 


THE 


Dance  of  Modern  Society 


BY 

WILLIAM  CLEAVER  WILKINSON. 


FEB  2  0  1911 


NEW  YORK : 
FUNK  &  WAGNALLS,  Publishers, 
i8  AND  20  AsTOR  Place. 

1889. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1884,  bj 
Funk  &  Wagnalls, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington,  D.  C, 


PREFACE. 


0) 


Since  first  propounding,  in  another  form,  to  a 
local  and  limited  public,  the  views  set  forth  in 
the  following  pages,  I  have  seen  no  reason  for 
seriously  modifying  the  expression  in  which, 
under  the  stimulus  of  a  particular  occasion,  I 
then  uttered  my  mind,  conscience,  and  my 
heart  on  the  subject  discussed.  The  particular 
occasion,  I  may  sa^^,  was  the  occurrence  of  an 
evening  party  at  which,  very  unexpectedly  to 
some  of  those  in  attendance,  the  customary  de- 
corum of  the  old-style  quadrille — that,  I  think, 
was  the  dance — was  disturbed  by  the  introduc- 
tion into  it  of  what  may  perhaps  be  called  a 
new  'figure,'  consisting  in  an  encirclement  of 
the  lady  by  her  partner  with  hio  arms  thrown 
about  her.  A  friena  of  mine,  a  gentleman 
possessing  the  finest  social  qualities  and  com- 
manding the  best  social  position,  remonstiated 
with  me  once  atjainst  what  he  felt  to  be  the  too 


595645 


4 


PREFACE. 


great  strictness  of  my  teachings  on  the  subject 
of  the  Dance.  I  listened  to  hiin  silently,  with 
the  sincerest  respect,  while  he  insisted  that 
square  dances  were  different  enough  from  round 
dances  not  to  be  included  with  these  in  the  same 
indiscriminate  condemnation.  (And  in  truth  I 
do  not  so  include  them.)  "  The  trouble  is,"  ray 
friend  went  on  regretfully  to  say,  "the  trouble 
is,  wherever  I  go,  the  young  people  will  not  be 
satisfied  to  stop  after  enjoying  square  dances. 
They  will  have  the  round  dances  before  the 
evening  is  out." 

This  inextinguishable  tendency  in  the  Dance 
to  proceed  from  degree  to  degree,  determines 
the  uncompromising  tone  which  I  trust  may  be 
forgiven  me  in  the  pages  to  follow. 


THE  DANCE 

OF 

MODERN  SOCIETY. 


1  PROPOSE  an  unusual  compliment  to  the 
Dance — I  propose  to  discuss  it  I  cheerfully 
lend  it  dignity  for  the  purpose.  I  pledge  my- 
self, besides,  to  put  it  permanently  beyond 
the  need  of  borrowing  again.  For  I  shall  be 
able,  I  believe,  to  vindicate  for  it  a  dignity  all 
its  own — the  dignity  of  being  exceedingly  evil 
— a  dignity  which,  however  modestly  worn,  I 
think  that  it  possesses  in  a  degree  commensurate 
with  the  magnitude  of  its  littleness  in  every 
other  respect. 

I  purpose,  then,  to  discuss  the  Dance  as  prac- 
tised in  modem  society.  I  purpose  to  discuss 
it  tamestly,  but  temperately,  with  strong  con- 
viction certainly,  but  without  unreasonable  pre- 
judice, and  in  a  manner  not  to  violate  the  deco- 
rum of  a  sincere  personal  respect  toward  those 
who  agree  with  me  in  zeal  for  good  morality, 

(5) 


8 


THE   DANCE  OF 


but  differ  with  me  in  opinion  upon  the  present 
topic. 

I  do  not,  it  will  be  seen,  affect  the  candor 
either  of  ingenuous  inquiry  or  of  judicial  neu- 
trality. Much  less  do  I  affect  the  candor  of  a 
merely  curious  unconcern.  I  appear  as  an  ad- 
vocate, and  I  do  not  expect,  as  I  shall  not  at- 
tempt, to  avoid  the  vehemence  of  advocacy.  T 
volunteer  my  oflBce  on  behalf  of  several  imper- 
illed interests,  all  of  them  valuable,  and  one  at 
least  vital.  It  is  the  cause  at  once  of  Health, 
of  Economy,  of  the  Social  ^Nature,  of  Intellect- 
ual Improvement,  and  of  Morality,  that  I  de- 
fend. I  undertake  to  implead  the  Dance  in 
their  joint  behoof  as  the  common  and  equal 
enemy  of  them  all. 

I  shall  summon  the  accused  to  answer,  not  at 
the  bar  of  passion,  however  holy  and  religious, 
and  not  before  the  tribunal  of  Scripture,  how- 
ever clear  and  authoritative,  but  rather  in  the 
wide  and  open  forum  of  reason,  of  conscience, 
and  of  common  sense.  If  the  Dance  can  escape 
conviction  here,  she  shall  be  welcome  for  me  to 
make  her  p'rouette,  and  go  tilting  out  of  court, 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


7 


free  to  take  her  chances  of  li\diig  down,  as  best 
she  may,  the  ancient  and  sacred  suspicion 
against  her,  which  still  survives  in  that  one  safe 
sanctuary  left  for  a  badgered  and  brow-beaten 
morality  ready  to  be  ashamed  of  itself — the  in- 
violate bosom  of  the  Christian  church. 

The  conscience  and  the  sentiment  of  the 
Ajnerican  community  produce  a  tolerably  uni- 
form annual  crop  of  discourses  and  of  newspa- 
per articles  on  this  favorite  social  amusement — 
"  social  amusement " — it  would  be  hard  to  deny 
it  the  name  by  which,  with  a  Mephistophelian 
sort  of  pleasantry  suspiciously  its  own,  the 
dance  has  succeeded  in  getting  itself  currently 
called.  A  chance  sermon  or  so  from  time  to 
time  attains  to  the  temporary  apotheosis  of 
print,  and  still  there  is  room  perhaps  for  the  use 
I  now  make  of  the  press  to  treat  of  a  social 
usage  which,  what  with  the  talk  that  it  occasions, 
and  the  talk  that  it  supersedes,  usurps  the  place 
of  more  conversation  in  so-called  society  than 
perhaps  any  other  human  interest  in  the 
world. 

Here;  then,  is  the  phenomenon  of  a  social  in* 


8 


IIIE   DANCE  01 


Btitution  that  has  grown  to  a  really  overshadow* 
iag  greatness  among  us  almost  imperceived, 
simply  by  the  policy  of  maintaining  always, 
with  a  persistent  laugh,  that  it  was  quite  too 
small  to  merit  a  serious  word.  I  have  a  serious 
w^ord,  notwithstanding,  to  say,  and  I  am  willing 
to  compromise  the  dignity  of  authorship,  in  the 
judgment  of  any  who  may  think  that  I  do  so, 
by  saying  it  in  a  little  book. 

The  subject  of  amusement  at  large,  it  would 
not  comport  with  the  simplicity  of  my  present 
purpose  to  discuss.  But  a  remark  or  two  in 
passing  will  not  be  irrelevant. 

It  is  an  ill  augury  for  a  Christian  age  to  be 
spending  much  brain  and  breath  upon  the  ques- 
tion how  to  amuse  itself.  Upon  the  whole,  it  is 
a  pagan  question ;  and  paganism  itself  has  al- 
ready declined  from  its  heroic  virtue  before  it 
condescends  to  entertain  it.  But  if  Christian 
teachers  allow  themselves  to  be  caught  with 
this  wile  of  the  devil,  and  submit  to  waste  their 
earnestness  in  p  tiful  casuistry  upon  points  of 
what  ?  and  when  ?  and  where  ?  and  how  much  I 
and  how  ?  in  the  art  of  amusement,  whence,  one 


MODERIJ^^  SOCIETY. 


9 


miglit  implore  to  know,  are  we  to  hope  for  the 
voice  that  shall  re-animate  an  abject  and  ololiv- 
ious  age  ?  If  the  salt  have  lost  his  savor,  where- 
with shall  it  be  salted  ?  And  if  the  blind  lead 
the  blind,  both  shall  fall  into  the  ditch. 

The  truth  is,  the  most  of  those  who  clamor  so 
imappeasably  for  amusement  are  precisely  that 
class  of  persons  who  need  amusement  least. 
They  are  the  cloyed,  the  sated,  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  pleasure,  those  who  feel  the  "  full- 
ness of  satiety  " — who  sigh,  like  the  Eastern 
prince,  for  a  fresh  sensation,  and  languidly 
offer  a  prize  for  a  new  device  of  diversion. 
These  jaded  voluptuaries  need  nothing  so  little 
as  amusement.  What  they  do  need  is  the 
bracing  tonic  regimen  of  wholesome,  honest, 
useful  work — such  as  the  teeming  dispensary 
of  Providence  is  never  at  a  loss  to  supply. 
They  might  well  mistake  the  thrill  of  unaccus- 
tomed and  unexpected  delight  which  would  go 
through  their  lax  nerves  with  a  few  strokes  of 
vigorous  work  in  some  good  canse,  not  in  their 
own,  for  that  novel  and  delicious  tingle  of 
pleasure  which  they  had  been  awaiting  and 


THE   DANCE  OF 


iiivoidng  so  long.  How  crass  the  folly  of  try- 
ing to  satisfy  these  morbid  seekers  after  amuse- 
menl  by  giving  them  what  they  crave ! 

And  yet  a  cry  from  time  to  time  arises,  a  cry 
likely  to  be  renewed  with  each  fresh  generation 
of  members  arrived  at  the  responsibility  of  man- 
agement, summoning  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Ak3sociations  of  the  country  to  enter  the 
field  of  competition  to  purvey  amusement,  ay  if 
for  this  very  class  of  minds.  The  plan  would 
be  to  emich  the  variety  of  entertainment  that 
now  invitbS  the  young  to  an  evening  of  rational 
enjoyment  in  their  hospitable  rooms,  by  adding 
facilities  for  games,  such  as  backgammon, 
draughts,  cheers,  billiards,  perhaps  cards.  It 
would  prove,  I  cannot  but  believe,  a  hazardous 
career  of  experment.  Our  Christian  Associa- 
tions cannot  afford  to  transform  themselves  into 
clubs,  clubs  differing  from  the  ordinary  sort 
only  in  being  conducted  on  quasi-charitable 
principles.  It  is  creditable  to  the  good  sense 
which  has  always  prevailed,  to  a  singular  ex- 
tent, in  the  counsels  of  these  bodies  that  they 
have  for  the  most  part  hitherto  resisted  the 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


11 


urgency  tl>at  has  impelled  them  toward  danger- 
ous extremes  in  the  new  direction.  It  is  most 
earnestly  to  be  hoped  that  a  wise  conservatism 
will  cLiitinue  to  be  the  spirit  that  rales  them. 
Whatever  may  be  the  theoretical  truth  respect- 
ing the  matter,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  any 
practical  administration  of  such  a  plan  that 
could  make  it  successful.  Tlie  theory  of  it  I 
believe  is  a  false  theory ;  but  if  the  theory  of  it 
were  true,  the  practical  realization  of  the  theory 
is  beset  with  innumerable,  and,  in  my  opinion, 
quite  insurmountable,  difficulties.  Our  senti- 
mental times  mistake  in  supposing  that  evil  can 
be  induced  to  shade  ofi*  into  good  by  insensible 
degrees.  Ton  can  never  make  the  transition 
from  sinful  pleasure  to  iimocent  pleasure  any- 
thing less  than  a  violent  transition.  The  ease 
of  transition  is  all  the  other  way.  It  will  be 
found  fearfully  practicable  to  educate  country 
boys  to  love  the  billiard-table,  and  to  cast  the 
mother's  tearful  warning  against  it  behind  their 
backs,  in  the  conceit  of  a  more  modem  Chris- 
tian wisdom  to  be  had  in  the  city.  It  will  be 
four.d  easy  to  give  country  boys  so  much  practice 


12 


THE    DANCE  OF 


witL  cue  and  ball  as  shall  take  away  their  guar- 
dian shame  of  accepting  some  farther-developed 
acquaintance's  invitation  to  turn  into'  a  down- 
stairs billiard-room  on  the  street.  This  drift  of 
education  will  prove  easy  and  swift.  All  the 
natural  forces  of  a  world  of  evil  will  assist  it. 
But  when  the  direction  is  reversed,  it  will  be  a 
different  matter.  When  it  comes  to  decoying 
away  a  country  boy,  that  has  once  got  the  taste 
of  that  strange  sweetness  under  his  tongue, 
from  the  haunt  of  pleasure  without  restraint  to 
the  home  of  pleasure  under  Christian  law — ^the 
managers  of  the  Associations  I  fear  will  find  that 
it  was  the  sin  that  gave  zest  to  the  pleasure  in- 
stead of  the  pleasure  that  gave  zest  to  the  sin. 
If  for  every  boy  enticed  to  viitue  by  the  bait  of 
mere  pleasure,  there  are  not  two  boys  enticed  to 
sin  thereby — why,  I  shall  be  sincerely  rejoiced, 
and  the  originator  of  the  plan  will  deserve  the 
credit  of  having  reinforced  the  gospel  of  Christ 
with  an  elemental  power  of  salvation  not  re- 
vealed by  its  author.  Alas!  men  readily  follow 
lures  of  pleasure  on  the  way  to  hell,  but  they 
revolt,  with  an  obstinacy  that  is  half  perverse- 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


13 


ncss  and  half  honest  indignation,  against  fol- 
lowing lures  of  pleasure  to  heaven.  But  this 
whole  subject  is  one  that  demands  and  will  re- 
ceive ample  discussion. 

The  dance  is  popularly  reckoned  among 
amusements.  But  for  this  I  should  not  need 
to  waste  a  word  upon  the  matter  of  amusement 
in  general.  As  it  is,  in  finding  a  quarrel  with 
the  dance  I  shall  be  held  to  be  waging  war 
against  amusement,  unless  I  explain  myself  in 
a  paragraph  or  two.  Briefly,  then,  I  am  not  an 
enemy  to  amusement.  I  believe  in  it.  I  be- 
lieve in  it  heartily.  I  believe  in  it  so  heaiiily 
that  I  would  give  it  a  better  name — I  would 
call  it  recreation.  But  amusement  needs  no 
eulogist.  It  has  happened,  by  the  chance  con- 
currence of  two  conditions  having  no  necessary 
relation  to  each  other,  that  the  cause  of  popular 
amusement  has  of  late  enlisted  among  us  a  sin- 
gularly numerous  and  brilliant  literary  cham- 
pionship. In  the  first  place,  there  is  a  perva- 
sive liberalizing  spirit  abroad  everywhere  in  our 
modem  American  atmosphere,  that  tends  to 
relax  the  Une  of  moral  sentiment  respecting 


14 


THE   DANOE  OP 


all  forms  ol  hnmaii  self-indulgeiice  and  materia] 
enjoyment.  But  in  the  second  place,  it  is  an 
incident  of  our  nineteenth  century  civilization 
that  we  live  intensely.  Everybody  is  in  a 
chronic  state  of  hurry.  This  highly  stimulated 
rate  of  living  takes  reprisals  upon  our  vitahty, 
and  we  vibrate  between  extremes  of  abnormal 
activity  and  extremes  of  abnormal  exhaustion. 
In  the  extremes  of  exhaustion  we  desperately 
implore  some  sudden  restorative.  This  restora- 
tive it  is  the  transitory  fashion  of  our  disease 
just  now  to  imagine  that  we  recognize  in 
amusement.  Om^  men  of  letters,  as  the  most 
sensitive  children  of  civilization,  are  perhaps 
the  severest  sufferers  by  the  prevalent  unnatu- 
ral velocity  of  li\dng.  It  is  but  a  matter  of 
course  that  they  should  most  keenly  feel  the 
need  of  an  instantaneous  remedy  for  their  enor- 
mous overdrafts  on  a  too  responsive  vitaKty,  and 
should  most  credulously  hail  whatever  remedy 
presents  itself  to  their  demand. 

Now  I  sympathize  vividly  with  all  my  liter- 
ary brethren  in  the  sense  of  bodily  prostration 
which  follows  intellftctual  toil.    I  know  as  weU 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


15 


as  any  what  it  is  to  have  the  omnivorous  and 
insatiable  brain  suck  vigor  out  of  every  nerve 
and  muscle^  out  of  every  joint  and  marroWj  in 
the  body,  and  leave  the  whole  man  a-quiver 
with  intense  and  fine  exhaustion.  I  have  known 
this,  and  with  all  my  literary  brethren  I  have 
longed  for  relief,  and  "  trusted  any  cure."  It 
costs  perhaps  the  most  exquisite  agony,  except 
the  agony  of  remorse,  of  which  an  aspiring 
mind  is  capable — to  lie  still  and  experience  the 
conscious  impotence  of  power.  Is  there  no  se- 
cret of  eternal  youth  for  the  eager  brain,  that, 
with  a  grief  to  which  the  fabled  grief  of  Alexan- 
der was  a  vulgar  emotion,  is  compelled  to  sink 
helplessly  on  the  hither  side  of  an  unconquered 
world,  which  it  yet  feels  to  be  inalienably  its 
own,  although  by  right  of  a  conquest  never  to 
be  accomplished  ?  It  is  not  an  ignoble  errant- 
ry that  wanders  in  quest  of  such  a  prize. 

But  I  am  profoundly  convinced  that  the  bent 
toward  ^amusement,'  or  ^recreation,'  or  ^mus- 
cular development,'  call  it  what  you  will,  that 
distinguishes  the  actual  moment,  is  a  wrong 
bent — a  monstrous  rioral  and  physical  bUinder 


16 


THE   DANCE  OF 


It  is  both  a  whimsical  and  a  pathetic  sign  of  the 
times  to  read  the  glowing  ascriptions  to  ^  mus- 
cle' with  which  periodical  literature  is  plenti- 
fully illustrated  from  the  pens  of  writers  whose 
own  muscle  has  been  fairly  eaten  up  by  their 
Drains.  It  is  perfectly  manifest  that  the  pre- 
vailing literary  humor,  with  respect  to  amuse- 
ment, is  a  sanguine  hope  that  amusement  may 
prove  to  be  the  long-sought  medicine,  which 
shall  be  able  to  repair  the  havoc  done  to  the 
body  by  the  starved  brain  in  its  voracious  for- 
ages for  food. 

Literary  men  are  not  long  in  finding  out  from 
experience  that,  except  within  certain  narrow 
limits  easily  overpassed,  muscular  activity  and 
cerebral  activity  are  implacable  mutual  enemies. 
There  is  no  better  wisdom  on  this  subject  than 
that  which  Hawthorne  derived  from  his  share 
in  the  Brook  Farm  experiment.  The  reader 
wiU  find  it  set  down  in  the  "  Blithedale  Eo- 
mance."  Hawthorne  found  that  Arcadia  and 
^Lttica  were  very  distinct  provinces.  He  says 
that  when  muscle  worked,  brain  would  not^ 
This,  I  take  it,  is  the  invariable  experience  of 


MODERN  SOCIETT. 


17 


every  literary  man.  The  consequence  is  tJiat 
the  athletic  sports,  which  are  praised  by  men  of 
brain,  are  practised  by  men  of  muscle.  Liter- 
ary men,  meanwhile,  betake  themselves  to  forms 
of  amusement  less  arduous  to  their  softened 
bodily  fibre.  They  patronize  the  theatre,  the 
opera,  the  billiard  table,  and,  now  and  then,  the  / 
dance. 

But  they  still  commit  a  blunder.  Is  it  recre- 
ation, for  example,  to  an  editorial  writer,  to 
rush  from  his  mental  workshop,  with  the  anvil 
of  his  brain  red-hot  under  the  swift  and  cease 
less  blows  of  thought,  to  a  place  of  public  enter- 
tainment, and  there  rob  sleep  of  the  precious 
hours  before  midnight  by  diverting  himself 
with  a  spectacle  ?  No  doubt  such  diversion  is 
better  for  his  over-wrought  brain  than  it  would 
be  to  continue  the  tension  which  the  change 
partially  relaxes.  But  manifestly  rest  is  his 
true  medicine.  IS  he  must  interpose  some  such 
transition,  by  way  of  opiate  to  prepare  him  for 
sleep,  that  only  shows  his  need  of  rest  to  be  the 
more  desperate.  When  a  man  has  to  resort  to 
sopoiifics  so  exhausting  that  it  would  task  an 
2 


18 


THE   DANCE  OP 


unbroken  vigor  of  health  simply  to  sustain  them 
with  impimity,  that  man's  condition  goes  far 
toward  resembling  the  condition  of  a  time-piece 
whose  main-spring  has  given  way  just  after 
winding.  There  is  nothing  to  reserve  and  regu- 
late his  expenditure  of  vitality.  He  is  continu- 
ously and  rapidly,  he  may  be  helplessly,  running 
down.  We  are  in  urgent  need  of  a  new  liter- 
ary period.    It  should  be  one  eulogistic  of  eest. 

Of  all  the  absurd  resorts,  however,  for  recre- 
ation, the  dance  is  the  most  exquisitely  absurd. 
I  shall  hardly  escape  the  charge  of  Puritan- 
ism for  saying  this — although  the  very  un-Puri- 
tanic  Thackeray  does  not  hesitate  to  set  a  man 
down  for  an  ass  that  confesses  himself  fond  of 
dancing.  I  should  myself  select  another  an- 
imal as  the  proper  analogue  for  such  a  man.  It 
is  not  pleasant  to  be  called  Puritanic  now-a- 
days.  It  requires  either  a  strong  nerve  or  a 
thick  skin  to  incur  the  epithet.  The  days  of 
heroic  fame,  for  the  Puritans,  seems  to  have 
passed,  and  we  are  taking  our  revenge  upon 
\tiiem  now  for  having  been  praised  so  long, 
Tliey  wore  a  grave  order  of  great  souls,  whoso 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


19 


faults,  like  their  virtuesj  were  on  an  ample  pat- 
tern. They  undoubtedly  went  too  far  in  moral 
severity ;  but  it  was  a  pathway  of  error  in 
which  their  following  was  never  likely  to  be 
large,  since  it  led  only  through  toil  and  loss  for 
themselves,  if  unhappily  it  did  also  lead  to 
some  discomfort,  and  even  suffering,  for  others. 
Their  figure  in  history  is  large  enough,  and 
unique  enough,  to  make  them  an  inviting  target 
for  the  small  archery  of  the  witlings  of  our 
gamesome  generation.  Even  Lord  Macaulay 
having  lauded  them,  in  a  strain  of  appreciation 
which  at  least  had  the  generosity,  if  it  had  also 
the  extravagance,  of  youth  in  it,  in  his  essay  on 
Milton,  afterward  recollected  himself  to  punc- 
ture them  with  more  than  ci  e  of  his  polished 
stiletto  antitheses,  in  his  History  of  England. 
(Hardly  any  of  those  brilliant  surprises  of  style, 
rwhich  constitute  at  once  the  strength  ^nd  the 
Weakness  of  this  great  maater  of  composition, 
nas  enjoyed  a  more  popular  fame  than  the  ver- 
bal lasso  which  he  let  fly  at  the  Puritans,  when 
he  said  that  they  hated  bear-baiting,  not  be- 
cause i^  gave  pain  to  the  bears,  but  because  it 


20 


THE   DANCE  OF 


gave  pleasure  to  the  spectators.  How  many 
have  smiled,  with  involuntary  applause,  at  this 
epigrammatic  snare  for  the  hapless  Puritans, 
and  how  few  have  ever  troubled  themselves  to 
perceive  that  the  game  which  it  catches  is  not 
the  Puritans  at  all,  but  the  epigrammatist  him- 
self. For  why,  pray,  should  the  Puritans  have 
hated  bear-baiting,  but  because  it  gave  pleasure 
to  the  spectators  ?  Was  not  that  the  demoral- 
izing element  in  the  sport  ?  And  were  not  the 
Purit ms  then  right,  if,  as  Macaulay  says,  they 
hated  bear-baiting  for  the  destructive  pleasure 
that  it  gave  to  the  spectators,  rather  than  foi 
the  destructive  pain  that  it  gave  to  the  bears. 
It  is  seldom  that  the  fowler  is  more  neatly  tak- 
en in  the  snare  that  he  lays.* 

*  Macaulay  is  at  curious  pains  to  show,  in  a  note,  that 
the  Puritans  were  not  actuated  by  compassion  for  the 
bears.  He  cites,  in  proof,  a  Puritan  document  which  re 
lates  how  some  bears  were  seized  and  shot  by  the  Puri- 
tans on  the  Lord's  day,  when  the  sport  was  at  its  height. 
It  might,  to  be  sure,  be  plausibly  maiiitained,  against  Ma- 
caulay, that  such  a  sudden  end  of  the  baiting  was  even  a 
measure  of  mercy  to  the  poor  beasts  ;  but  it  would  be  safe 
to  concede  to  the  great  historian's  need,  that  the  Puritans 
were  not  sentimentalists.  It  was  hardly  worth  his  learn- 
ing to  demou^'/iate  it. 


MODERN  SOCIETY* 


21 


Our  modem  festive  -^dsdom  is  far  too  self- 
complacent.  It  is  not  certain,  after  all,  that  tlie 
Puritans  were  not  nearer  the  truth  than  we. 
Grim  earnest  is  nobler  than  play  run  mad.  It 
is  even  more  joyous.  It  is  open  to  fair^  doubt 
whether  the  Puritans  were  not  a  happier  race 
of  beings  tha  i  their  jovial  descfioidants.  And, 
in  the  long  run,  excessive  gravity  is  not  more 
cruel  than  excessive  levity.  Puritan  Boston  in 
the  seventeenth  century  is  a  less  depressing 
spectacle,  to  the  thoughtful  student  of  history.^ 
than  is  JSTouveau  Paris,  or  I  will  say  New  York, 
in  the  nineteenth. 

Thus  much  of  amusement  in  general — a  sub- 
ject long  since  copiously  enough,  but  by  no 
means  as  yet  exhaustively,  discussed.  My  pres- 
ent business,  however,  is  with  the  dance,  not  as 
an  amusement,  but  as  an  existing  social  institu- 
tion. For  all  that  I  have  to  say  of  it,  it  might 
as  well  be  serious  as  sportive.  Indeed  I  expect 
to  succeed  in  making  it  far  more  serious  than 
sportive.  I  am  to  enquire  into  the  bearing  of  the 
dance  upon  several  important  human  interests. 

In  the  first  place  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say 


22 


THE    DANCE  OP 


that  dancing,  in  itself,  is  perfectly  innocent. 
No  one  denies  tliis.  It  is  as  liannless  to  dance 
as  it  is  to  walk,  or  to  run.  But  the  present 
question  is  not  of  dancing  in  the  abstract. 
Dancing  does  not  exist  in  the  abstract.  It  ex- 
ists, like  most  things,  in  a  certain  way.  It  is 
of  dancing,  as  thus  practised,  in  a  certain  way^ 
that  I  am  going  to  speak.  I  do  not  restrict  my 
argument  or  my  conclusion  to  balls  or  public 
assemblies. "  I  should  waste  my  zeal.  I'here  is 
happily,  as  yet,  too  unanimous  a  sentiment 
among  sensible  people  against  them — unless  the 
case  happens  to  be  that  of  the  quadrennial  in- 
auguration ball,  or  other  such  assembly,  by 
which  it  is  the  barbarian  custom  still  to  soil  om* 
Bocial  purity  and  signalize  some  public  occasion. 
The  charity  ball,  too,  is  a  variety  of  the  public 
dancing  assembly  to  which  special  indulgence 
seems  to  be  accorded.  It  is  respectable,  it  is 
even  distinguished,  (somewhat  promiscuous 
though  inevitably  the  attendance  must  be) 
to  decorate  these  occasions  with  your  presence, 
and  make  your  giving  to  the  poor  delightful 
with  the  ds'nce. 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


2S 


Nor  yet  do  I  restrict  my  argument,  or  ray 
conclusion,  to  those  rhythmic  gyrations  popularly 
called  "  round  dances."  A  popular  magazine 
never  distinguished  for  martyrdom  to  principle, 
may  safely  inveigh  against  these.  The  argu- 
ment is  merely  some  degrees  stronger,  and  the 
conclusion  some  degrees  clearer,  against  such 
excessive  developments  of  the  primordial  idea. 
When  T  name  the  dance  (for  the  sake  of  being 
perfectly  understood,  I  may  say)  I  mean  the 
dance  as  many  of  the  most  respectable  members 
of  society,  including  no  inconsiderable  propor- 
tion of  accepted  Christians,  not  unfrequently 
practice  it.  I  am  thus  frank,  not  for  the  sake 
of  seeming  boldj  but  for  the  sake  of  being  clear. 
My  readers  need  none  of  them  be  at  any  loss  as 
to  just  what  I  mean.  I  mean  the  dance  as  it 
flourishes  in  the  most  proper  and  reputable  cir- 
cles to-day. 

For  the  sake  of  perspicuity  and  convenience 
T  shall  pursue  the  present  investigation  into  the 
propriety  of  the  dance,  under  the  following 
general  topics.  The  division  wiH,  I  trust,  be 
found  sufficiently  common-place  and  obvious. 


24 


THE   DANCE  OF 


I.  The  bearing  of  the  dance  upon  the 
Health ; 

II.  Its  relation  to  Economy ; 
III.  Its  Social  Tendency ; 
lY.  Its  Influence  upon  Intellectual  Improve 
ment ; 

V.  Its  Moral  or  Eeligious  Aspects. 

This  order  of  investigation  is  not  merely 
mechanical  and  fortuitous.  It  wiU  prove  to 
build  a  cumulative  argument,  bearing  with 
multiplied  power,  upon  the  paramount  interest 
involved,  that  of  morahty  or  religion.  The 
chief  sufferer  suffers  not  only  its  own  injury,  but 
also  the  injury  of  aU  the  rest. 

I.  What  bearing  does  the  dance,  as  it  exists 
among  us,  have  upon  the  health  ?  An  amuse- 
ment ought  at  least  to  be  harmless  in  its  hygi- 
enic effects.  If  it  does  not  build  up,  it  should 
certainly  not  break  down.  Now  the  dance, 
considered  apart  from  its  conventional  purposes, 
simply  as  a  physical  exercise,  might  conceiva- 
bly be  so  conducted  that  it  would  constitute  a 
wholly  health-giving  pastime.    In  the  open  air, 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


25 


at  rational  hours  of  the  day,  for  a  rational  length 
of  time,  scarcely  to  exceed  say  an  hour,  those 
participating  in  it  being  suitably  attired  to 
permit  the  freest  play  of  the  lungs  —  these 
and  other  Kke  conditions  fulfilled,  and  the 
dance,  no  doubt,  might  make  good  a  claim  to  be 
ranked  as  a  healthful  diversion.  There  would 
stiU  remain  other  points  of  importance  to  be 
settled,  before  its  propriety  could  be  unreserv- 
edly admitted ;  but  regarded  merely  with  ref- 
erence to  health,  the  dance  might  then  pass 
without  challenge. 

But  suppose  all  these  rational  conditions  re. 
versed.  The  gymnasium,  in  the  American  use 
of  the  term,  is  an  establishment  expressly  de- 
voted to  purposes  of  physical  culture  by  means 
of  physical  exercise.  What  would  be  thought  of 
a  gymnasium  that  should  carpet  its  floors,  and 
close  its  windows,  that  should  then  announce  its 
hours  of  exercise  as  commencing  at  ten  o'clock 
at  night  to  continue  until  two  or  three  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  interrupted  by  a  sumptuous  mid- 
night feast,  ah  with  an  in-door  atmosphere, 
doubly  heated  and  doubly  corrupted  by  fires 


26 


THE   DANCE  OF 


and  by  a  dense  crowd  of  jostling  guests,  redo- 
lent of  perfumes,  met  under  rigorous  demands 
that  their  dress  should  be  such  as  to  repress  res- 
piration, and  to  embarrass  everything  like  nat- 
uralness and  ease  of  movement  ?  What  if,  be- 
sides, the  conditions  should  be  so  contrived  as 
to  compel  the  unnaturally  heated  gymnasts  to 
make  their  transition  to  a  contrasted  atmos- 
phere out-of-doors,  exposed  in  the  most  sensitive 
parts  of  the  body,  through  insufficient  clothing, 
to  the  risks  of  rheumatism,  neuralgia,  colds, 
catarrhs,  consumption  ?  What,  I  ask,  would  be 
thought  of  a  gymnasimn  that  should  conduct 
its  exercises  on  such  a  plan  as  this  ?  But  is  not 
the  parallel  suggested,  mainly,  and  with  a  mar- 
gin in  favor  of  particular  instances,  a  tolerably 
fair  one  ? 

I  repeat  that  I  am  not  discussing  the  dance 
as  it  might  be,  but  the  dance  as  it  is.  Those 
public-spirited  and  philanthropic  individuals, 
who,  inspired  with  zeal  for  the  morals  of  soci- 
ety, are  at  present  engaged  in  the  hopeful  enter- 
prise of  elevating  the  stage  to  its  true  position, 
as  yoke-fehow  to  the  pulpit  in  the  inculcation 


MODEKN  SOCIETY. 


27 


of  virtue,  will  scarcely  have  time  after  they 
have  finished  that  task  to  perform  a  like  service 
for  the  dance,  in  making  it  what  it  should  be  as 
the  handmaid  of  medicine  in  advancing  the 
standard  of  the  general  health.  Otherwise,  the 
two  projects  are  such  natural  twins  they  would 
appropriately  be  entrusted  to  the  same  hands 
ff^r  execution. 

We  witnessed  a  few  years  ago  a  brilliant  re- 
vival of  the  pure  drama  in  our  metropolis,  A 
man  of  genius,  and  a  man  of  character  as  was 
supposed,  the  heir  of  rare  ancestral  histrionic 
fame,  achieved  more  than  one  man  perhaps 
ev^er  before  achieved  fvSr  the  rescue  of  the  stage 
from  the  drag  of  that  downward  moral  and 
aesthetic  gravitation  which  it  has  never  suc- 
cessfully resisted  hitherto.  A  temple  reared 
and  gifted  by  his  own  fortunate  and  munificent 
theatrical  piety,  scenery  and  appointments  un- 
paralleled for  splendor,  a  generous  public  sym- 
pathy with  remarkable  talent  and  enterprise, 
the  auxiliar  hopes  of  all  cultivated  lovers  of  the 
spectacle — these  composed  a  set  of  auspices  such 
as  probably  will  not  soon  smile  on  an  attempt 


28 


THE    DANCE  OF 


to  save  the  drama  again.  The  success  seemed 
at  first  to  confirm  tlie  auspices.  The  patronage 
of  the  new  theatre  was  said  to  be  made  up  in 
part  of  elements  that  had  been  fairly  won  over 
to  the  friendly  side  from  the  rants  of  those 
previously  hostile  to  the  stage.  It  really  looked 
as  if  there  were  some  Christians  ready  at  last  to 
use  their  influence  toward  the  purification  of 
w^hat  they  have  striven  in  vain  to  abolish.  For 
this  is  the  flattering  hope  with  which  Christian 
people  have  long  been  allured  to  the  counte- 

I  nancing  of  the  theatre.  They  have  been  told 
that  by  resolutely  refusing  to  attend  the  theatre, 
they  have,  in  eflfect,  dej^rived  it  of  that  conserv- 

\  ative  influence  which  it  was  in  their  power  to 
exert,  and  which  was  necessary  to  keep  it  from 

J  degenerating  to  the  level  of  its  more  degraded 
patrons.  Those  Christian  men  who  think  that 
they  are  surely  wise,  if  they  are  only  not  ex- 
treme, have  been  tempted  to  take  some  such 
middle  ground  in  respect  to  the  theatre  as  this. 
Now,  as  Webster  told  Mr.  Ilayne,  if  a  thing  is 
to  be  done,  an  ingenious  man  can  tell  how  it  is 
to  be  done    Let  us  §^e  how  the  stage  is  to  be 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


29 


regenerated  by  Christian  patronage  of  tlie  stage. 
Managers,  of  course,  conduct  tLeir  operations 
with  a  thrifty  eye  to  the  avoidance  of  deficits 
at  the  end  of  the  season.  They  aim  to  please 
theii  patrons.  Christians,  therefore,  in  order  to 
influence  theatrical  management,  must  not 
merely  give  moral,  they  must  give  material, 
support  to  the  theatre.  They  must  go  to  the 
plays.  They  must  go  often  enough,  and  in 
numbers  enough,  to  compose  a  preponderating 
proportion  of  the  attendance.  IsTow,  the  Prot- 
estant Christians  of  New  York  number,  by 
probable  computation,  about  a  hundred  thousand 
out  of  a  million  and  a  half  of  inhabitants.  Sup- 
posing a  general  agreement  among  them  all 
that  a  regular  attendance  at  the  theatre  was  at 
this  juncture  the  most  pressing  and  most  prom- 
ising method  of  evangelic  effort,  they  would  not 
then  constitute  even  one-tenth  of  the  numerical 
patronage  which  the  management  would  study 
to  please.  Rather  a  slender  minority  to  dictate 
the  character  of  the  representations.  But  on 
certain  evenings  of  the  week  obedience  to  their 
Master,  in  ?  point  where  there  could  be  no  mis- 


30 


THE   DANCE  OF 


taking  of  His  will,  would  draw  them  away  to 
their  own  assemblies  for  conference,  and  for 
prayer  that  their  zeal  in  purifying  the  theatre 
might  be  successful.  On  those  evenings,  what 
if  Satan  should  put  into  the  heart  of  the  man- 
agers that  then,  at  least,  there  could  be  no  ob- 
jection to  letting  down  the  moral  standard  to 
the  taste  of  "  the  general " — would  the  gain  be 
great  ?  Or  if,  for  the  sake  of  making  their  in- 
fluence more  sensible,  Christians  should  concen- 
trate their  patronage  upon  some  one  theatre, 
and  should  succeed  in  rendering  that  unexcep- 
tionable, is  it  certain  that  ten  other  theatres 
would  not  spring  up  to  supply  the  star^dng  ap- 
petite of  the  populace  outnumbering  them  ten- 
fold for  low  representations  ?  The  purification 
of  the  theatre  is  the  merest  catchword  that  ever 
snared  a  hopeful  and  credulous  public.  It  means, 
at  most,  but  the  maintenance  of  one  theatre  in 
a  great  city,  where  a  high  moral  and  aesthetic 
standard  of  representation  is  observed.  That 
might  be  a  gain  to  the  intellectual  facilities  of 
the  community,  but  it  would  not  be  one  infin- 
itesimal degree  of  progress  towai^d  any  substati- 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


31 


tial  moral  reform.  As  a  matter  of  present  ob- 
servation, did  the  great  dramatic  revival  pre- 
vent a  bottomless  degradation  of  the  stage  ? 

The  close  kinship  between  the  subject  of  the 
theatre  and  the  subject  of  the  dance,  at  jnst 
this  point,  makes  it  no  digression  to  have  spoken 
at  such  length  of  the  theatre.  Chi'istian  people, 
and  moral  people,  and  sensible  people  in  gener- 
al, have  been  exhorted  to  smile  instead  of 
frowning  on  the  dance,  in  the  assurance  that,  if 
they  did  so,  the  willful  but  good-hearted  little 
jade  would  be  charmed  quite  out  of  her  frolic 
perverseness,  and  would  settle  down  into  a^ 
prim  and  proper  a  damsel  as  any  reasonable 
person  could  desire.  But  I  suspect  that  the 
result  of  such  a  well-intended  attempt  at  moral 
suasion  on  the  dance  would  be  much  the  same 
as  that  sketched  for  the  hypothetical  experiment 
on  the  theatre.  There  might  be  moral  plays 
and  there  might  be  moral  dances ;  but  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly questionable  if  either  moral  plays  or 
moral  dances  would  possess  that  unique  aro- 
matic sapor  which  is  requisite  in  order  wholly 
to,  satisfy  the  appetite  of  the  original  lovers  of 


82 


THE   DANCE  OF 


the  legitimate  articles.  It  would  certainly  be 
one  of  the  most  strildng  spectacles  of  misguided 
philanthropy  and  self-sacrifice,  that  the  world 
has  ever  produced,  to  behold  a  well-regulated, 
demure-stepping,  devout  procession  of  pastors, 
elders,  deacons,  and  brethren,  with  a  sprinkling 
of  young  converts,  filing  into  Wallack's  of  an 
evening,  to  assist  at  the  purification  of  the 
comedy.  It  would  only  be  equalled  by  a  fes- 
tive assembly  of  the  hke  characters  striving  to 
smile  benign,  and  yet  superior,  on  the  occasion, 
while,  with  King  David  in  mind  for  model,  and 
Herodias'  daughter  for  warning,  they  glided  in 
Quixotic  benevolence  through  the  stately  quad- 
rille, blandly  hoping  thereby  to  reclaim  the 
dance  from  the  vain  world  to  the  pious  nurture 
of  the  Church. 

But  it  is  too  serious  a  matter  for  irony. 
There  is  no  other  social  usage  whatever  that  in 
my  opinion  is,  directly  and  indirectly,  charge- 
able with  producing  more  of  the  ill-health, 
which,  destroying  the  Life-long  comfort  of  our 
wives,  our  sisters,  and  our  mothers,  is  steadily 
diluting  and  coiTupting.  at  its  source  the  blood 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


33 


of  our  civiKzation.  The  general  system  of  late 
hours,  which,  has  grafted  its  monstrous  absurd- 
ity upon  our  modern  social  life,  is  probably 
traceable  to  the  dance.  Viewed  from  without, 
the  dance  is  essentially  a  spectacle,  and  a  spec- 
tacle does  not  love  daylight.  It  naturally  seeks 
a  less  discriminating  and  a  more  suggesting  il- 
lumination. Or  else,  from  the  interior  point  of 
view,  the  dance  is  a  syncope  of  abandonment  to 
sensuous  pleasure ;  and  sensuous  pleasure  is  a 
dream  which  cannot  "  feel  the  truth  and  stir  of 
day  "  without  losing  something  of  that  delicious 
self-forgetfulness  which  is  necessary  to  its  per- 
fect bhss.  In  truth,  the  dance,  raised  to  a  Mnd 
of  autocracy,  has  dictated  to  us  in  the  whole 
conduct  of  our  social  life.  It  has  prescribed  mid- 
night hours,  tight-lacing,  papei  soled  shoes — in 
short,  a  good  number  of  those  hurtful  usages 
which  distort  the  development  of  modern  soci- 
ety. For  whatever  will  serve  to  heighten  the 
illusion  and  seductiveness  of  the  dance — whether 
it  be  late  hours,  with  the  glare  of  artificial  light 
which  they  make  necessary,  small  waists,  to 
render  the  female  foim  as  insect'like  as  possible, 


34 


THE   DANCE  DF 


that  it  may  resemble  some  imaginary  sylph^ 
rather  than  that  grand  old  mother  Eve,  whom 
God  created  for  a  wife  to  Adam — or  whether  it 
be  their  dress,  floating  like  a  fleecy  cloud  about 
the  person  of  the  wearer — no  matter  what  it  be, 
provided  only  it  will  set  off  the  dance — Fashion 
decrees  it  and — women  adopt  it.  Thus  much  for 
the  dance  as  a  matter  of  health.  There  will  be 
implications  under  the  concluding  division  of 
the  subject,  that  touching  morality,  which,  re- 
flecting their  influence  backward  upon  the  first, 
will  involve  men  and  women  together  in  phys- 
ical as  well  as  moral  injury  from  the  dance  to 
even  a  more  serious  degree.  For  the  dance  is 
not  without  vital  relation  to  that  vice  which 
ever  and  anon  forces  itself  into  discussion 
under  the  euphemism  of  the  "  Social  Can- 
cer." The  spirit  of  fairness  of  course  obliges 
me  to  admit  that  the  extravagances  named  as 
attaching  to  the  chance  are  not  always  carried  to 
equal  lengths. 

II.  I  am  next  to  consider  the  dance  as  It 
bears  upon  the  matter  of  Expenditure.  This  ia 
certainly  a  subordinate  view  of  the  subject,  but 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


35 


it  is  one  nevertheless  sufficiently  ii  aportant  to 
deserve  a  moment's  attention.  No  student  of 
history  needs  to  be  reminded  that  there  is  a 
close  connection  between  the  sumptuary  habits 
of  a  people  and  that  people's  moral  and  phys- 
ical virility.  Luxury  is  implacable  foe  to  lon- 
gevity, whether  of  nation  or  of  individual. 

The  dance,  I  have  said,  is,  so  far  as  concerns 
what  passes  externally,  a  spectacle.  (The 
chorus  of  invisible  sensations  and  emotions  in 
the  bosoms  of  the  participants,  is  a  spectacle 
too — to  the  angels  !)  It  is  frequently  pleaded 
for  on  the  ground  of  its  graceful  and  pictur- 
esque, effect  to  the  eye.  Everything  that  can 
contribute  to  enhance  this  scenic  effect  is 
sought  for  with  eager  ingenuity.  The  more 
splendid  the  saloon,  the  more  sumptuous  tho 
appointments,  the  more  brilliant  the  assembly 
— the  greater  the  social  success.  Accordingly, 
no  end  to  the  rivalry  of  ladies  in  attempting  to 
eclipse  each  other  in  the  costly  display  of  furni- 
ture, of  service,  of  dress,  and  of  jewelry.  This 
barbaric  com})etition  in  lavishness  of  expendi- 
ture, starting  from  high  places  of  fashion,  travels 


36 


THE    DANCE  OF 


outward  and  downward,  through  every  quartei 
of  Christendom,  (the  unavoidable  irony  of  the 
word  !)  and  through  every  grade  of  society.  It 
:x3nds  to  impoverish  every  noble  human  need  to 
enrich  the  insatiable  shrine  of  Fashion, 

That  what  I  say  is  true  any  gossipping  letter 
of  social  news  (always  a  feature  of  leading  jour- 
nals, especially  while  society  is  holding  its  court 
at  the  sea-side,  or  at  watering-places,)  giving  an 
account  of  some  gay  party  or  ball,  is  witness. 
Every  reader  is  familiar  with  the  penny-a-liner's 
detail  and  fine  wTiting  with  which  the  greedy 
fashionable  public,  and  perhaps  a  still  more 
numerous  pubhc  not  initiated,  and  green  with 
envy  of  the  fashionable  public — very  green — is 

informed  how  the  elegant  Mrs.  A   was 

dressed,  and  what  length  of  trail  she  drew — 
I  how  many  thousand  dollars  in  diamonds  flashed 
like  fireflies  out  of  the  darkness  from  the  raven 

tresses  of  Mrs.  B  's  hair,  and  so  on  to  the 

end  of  the  alphabet.  "What  does  not  thus  ob- 
tain the  prize  of  newspaper  publicity,  never- 
theless forms  the  staple  of  private  corres])ond- 
ence  and  buzzes  about  in  ladies'  small  talk, 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


37 


antil  attention  is  absorbed  again  in  still  more 
extravagant  prepara^tion  for  the  next  magnifi- 
cent affair. 

^  Society '  has  its  '  Court  Gazettes '  in  our  re- 
publican metropolis,  in  which  the  student  of  our 
social  manners  may  read  daily  or  weekly  ad 
nauseam^  the  story  of  life  as  it  is  lived  in  the 
gay  world  at  home.  He  must  be  prepared  not 
to  gasp  with  rustic  amazement  if  he  lights  upon 
a  whole  column  of  extremely  personal  gossij), 
studded  thick  with  names  printed  outright,  in 
honest  letters  unashamed,  of  ladies  that  have 
had  the  good  luck  to  deserve  such  mention  by 
a  ball-dress  particularly  suited  to  their  style  of 
beauty,  or  by  a  morning  toilette,  graceftdly  har- 
monized with  their  figure  and  gait  on  the  street. 
Guess,  if  you  can,  the  vanity  that  is  eating  out 
the  heart  of  a  society  where  these  things  have 
become  common.  Is  it  not  edifying  to  read,  as 
quite  lately  one  could  do,  in  such  a  newspaper, 
a  solemn  prophet- w^arning  to  New  York  about 
out-Paris-ing  Paris  ? 

It  may  be  said  tliat  these  excesses,  w^hich  no- 
body will  deny,  are  not  confined  to  the  occasioa 


38 


THE    DANCE  OF 


of  the  dance.  And  it  must  be  admitted  that  in 
truth  they  are  not.  They  are  equally  incident 
to  every  so-called  amusement  that  consists 
mainly  in  making  up  a  spectacle.  The  opera, 
and  sometimes  the  theatre,  the  theatre  now-a* 
days  more  and  more  I  believe,  are  close  of  kin 
to  the  dance  in  the  respects  enumerated.  I 
hold  that  in  the  comparatively  sordid  interest 
of  economy  even,  how  much  more  in  tlie  inter- 
est of  simplicity  and  virtue  in  pubhc  manners, 
such  forms  of  amusement  should  be  sternly  dis- 
countenanced. When  Fashion  shall  miss  her 
chance  of  holding  her  gay  and  heartless  court 
in  the  ball-room  and  opera-house — then  we  may 
hope  to  see  Christian  women  free  enough  from 
a  tyranny  whose  prying  and  ubiquitous  petti- 
ness might  have  given  to  Philip  II.  of  Spain 
his  favorite  idea  of  kingship — free  enough,  I 
say,  to  go  to  God's  house  on  the  Sabbath,  with- 
out having  their  ejaculatory  prayers  on  the  way 
disturbed  by  a  persistent  accompaniment  of 
misgivings  as  to  whether  the  bonnets  they  are 
compelled  to  wear,  from  the  preceding  season, 
are  not  "perfect  frights,''  because,  forsooth,  a 


MODEKN  Sl)CIETY. 


39 


triJie  less  exquisitely  ridiculous  than  those  of  the 
style  which  has  just  superseded  them  !  I  may 
be  wroug,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  dance, 
being  formed  upon  the  idea  of  a  spectacle,  and 
converting  especially  every  lady  participant 
in  it  into  an  object  to  be  gazed  at,  and  to  court 
admiration,  as  the  joint  chef  d^oeuvre  of  the  mil- 
liner, of  the  jeweller,  and  of  the  hairdresser — 
it  might  be  unfair  not  to  add  also  of  the  danc- 
ing-master— the  dance  being  thus  essentially  for 
the  exhibition  of  the  woman  as  a  thing  rather , 
than  as  a  person,  as  a  miracle  of  decorated  ex-  ' 
terior,  rather  than  as  the  heiress  of  a  priceless 
heart,  and  of  a  beautiful  and  beautified  mind  i 
— the  dance  being  such  has  largely  contributed' 
to  the  creation  of  that  meretricious  taste  in 
dress  wliich  seriously  threatens,  through  its  di- 
rect and  indirect  economic  influence,  to  corrupt 
and  (Jeteriorate  the  very  basis  of  our  American 
society.  True  it  is  that  the  comparatively  un- 
pretending and  innocent  dancing  parties,  which 
take  place  in  less  utterly  frivolous  circles  of  so- 
ciety, stop  far  short  of  the  monstrous  extremes 
that  I  have  described.    But  the  tendency  is 


40 


THE    DANCE  OF 


j  one.  All  rivers  run  to  the  sea.  These  smaller 
f  assemblies  are  feeders  to  the  larger.  And  the 
\law  issues  from  the  ball-room  to  the  private 
I  parlor,  just  as  to  private  theatricals  the  law  de- 
(  scends  from  the  more  elaborate  scenic  display 
p{  the  theatre. 

III.  I  am,  in  the  third  place,  to  estimate  the 
effect  of  the  dance  upon  the  development  of 
the  Social  Nature. 

The  dance  is  customarily  spoken  of  as  a  social 
amusement.  If  society  consists  in  mere  con- 
gregation of  human  persons,  then  the  dance 
may  perhaps  substantiate  its  claim  to  be  a  so- 
cial amusement.  But  if,  on  the  contrary,  the 
social  life  of  mankind  consists  rather  in  the  con 
tact  of  soul  with  soul,  and  in  commerce  of  mu 
tual  thought,  and  feeling,  and  experience,  then 
I  maintain  that  the  dance  is  not  only  not  pro- 
perly social,  but  is  irreconcilably  opposed  to  so- 
ciety. I  think  that  the  distinction  should  be 
remembered  and  recognized  in  our  selection  of 
words.  It  is  an  abuse  of  language  to  call  a 
herding  together  of  people  moving  about,  no 
matter  with  how  much  rhythmic  and  kaleido- 


MODERN  SOCIETT. 


41 


Bcopic  grace,  to  music,  an  exemplification  of 
human  social  life.  If  we  needs  must  have  a 
stock  epithet  to  characterize  the  thing,  better 
call  the  dance  a  gregarious  amusement,  and 
leave  tlie  nobler  adjectiv^e  for  consecration  to  a 
foiTQ  of  human  intercourse  in  which  speech 
plays  some  part  to  distinguish  it  from  the  mass- 
ing together  of  a  jostling  crowd  of  mute  or 
merely  gibbering  animals. 

Am  I  unfair  to  the  dance  ?  No  doubt  the 
view  of  it  which  I  am  presenting  may  be  novel 
to  those  easily  contented,  because  unreflecting, 
minds  who  mllingly  resign  themselves  to  be 
cheated  \vith  the  jugglery  of  words.  Because 
it  is  the  fashion  to  class  the  dance  among  the 
social  entertainments,  most  persons  passively  let 
it  go  under  that  disguise.  But  strip  off  the 
epithet  that  behes  it,  and  scan  it  once  in  its 
nakedness,  and  if  it  does  not  appear  as  grim  a 
sham,  for  an  exercise  of  the  social  nature,  as 
ever  imposed  upon  intelKgent  men  and  women 
— why  then  I  must  confess  myself  to  have  mis- 
conceived the  truth  concerning  what  social  en- 
joyment for  the  human  race  should  be. 


42 


THE    DANCE  OF 


JSTv^fc  long  ago,  at  a  dancing  party,  it  was  re- 
marked by  a  lady,  herself  I  believe  a  participant 
in  tlie  exercise,  to  a  person  of  my  acquaintance, 
"  I  wish  there  were  not  so  much  dancing  as 
there  is ;  it  seems  impossible  to  get  acquainted 
with  each  other  !  "  That  woman  at  least  had 
got  a  peep,  probably  without  knomng  it,  under 
the  impudent  mask  which  still,  to  the  most, 
makes  the  dance  seem  a  social  amusement. 

'No  wonder  the  dance  is  patronized,  as  it  is, 
by  diplomatists  and  poKticians.  Not  all  have 
Talleyrand's  art  to  reahze  his  definition  of  the 
use  of  language  and  conceal  their  thoughts  by 
words."^  And  since  it  is  necessary  so  often,  for 
pubhc  and  political  purposes,  that  thoughts 
should  be  concealed,  how  invaluable  a  device  for 

*  A  friend,  learned  in  such  curious  points,  has  shown 
me  a  passage  in  Goldsmith's  prose  where  the  fine  phrase 
traditionaUy  ascribed  to  the  Frenchman,  seems  almost  to 
have  been  anticipated.  But  Voltaire's  proud  boast,  that 
when  the  Almighty  wished  a  thought  to  make  the  circuit 
of  the  world,  he  kindled  it  in  the  heart  of  a  Frenchman, 
has  here  its  humble  fulfillment ;  for  this  mot,  barbed  as  it 
is,  with  the  fitness  in  it  to  Talleyrand's  character,  has 
found  a  currency  in  the  mouths  of  men  which  hardly  any 
other  authorship  supposable  could  have  given  it. 


MODERN  SJCIETY. 


43 


statesmen  is  an  institution  Kke  the  dance,  wliich 
shall  enable  them  to  gratify  society  by  conde- 
scending to  be  social,  without  running  the  risk  of 
saying  more  than  a  dozen  consecutive  words  in 
the  course  of  an  evening ! 

But  it  is  often  insisted  that  the  dance  is  un- 
rivalled for  the  ease  and  grace  it  imparts  to  the 
carriage  and  manners,  thus  at  least  removing 
the  friction  with  which  the  want  of  external 
poKsh  hinders  the  pleasurable  interflow  of  indi- 
viduals in  society.  I  indulge  my  private  guess 
of  at  least  one  Christian  man,  no  longer  con- 
spicuous even  in  his  own  denominational  circles, 
who,  transferred  for  a  time  by  Providence  from 
the  pastor's  personal  wrestle  with  the  foes  which 
beleaguer  youth  to  a  sphere  of  less  publicity, 
where  large  and  Hberal  views  of  worldly  con- 
formity were  easier  to  entertain,  capitulated  to 
this  temptation,  and  suffered  his  children  to  go 
where  the  dancino-  master  mio-ht  soften  the  nat- 

o  o 

ural  angularity  of  their  movements  into  th© 
flowing  curves  said  to  approximate  more  nearly 
to  the  ideal  of  perfect  grace.  Alas,  alas  I  Does 
not  even  the  poet  teach  the  Christian  teacher  a 
deeper  lesson  than  that  ? 


THE    DANCE  OF 


For  manners  are  not  idle,  out  the  fruit 
Of  loyal  nature,  and  of  noble  mind. 

If  such  hirelings  as  Christian  parents  are  able 
to  secure  to  teach,  in  the  capacity  of  dancing- 
master,  elegant  manners  to  their  children,  can 
in  the  course  of  a  few  afternoons  or  evenings 
impart  to  them  a  life-long  effect  of  improve- 
ment, what  might  not  be  hoped  for,  if  the  home 
itself  were  made  a  school  of  grace  and  courtesy, 
in  which  the  heart  should  be  taught  to  tone  the 
voice,  and  light  the  eye,  and  mould  the  mien, 
and  modulate  all  to  the  rhythmical  mood  of  un- 
dissimulated  love  ?  Who  has  ever  compared  the 
Peter  that  obtrudes  his  uncouth  figure  in 
ghmpses  here  and  there  through  the  gospels,  with 
the  Peter  that  afterwards  betrays  so  ineffable 
a  grace  of  high-bred  courtesy  in  his  epistles — 
jwho  has  ever  considered  the  transformation  that 
/had  passed  upon  this  man  in  the  school  of 
Christ,  making  the  Galilean  the  cosmopoHte, 
the  fisherman  the  gentleman, — who  has  done 
this  and  not  perceived  that  the  last  accomplish- 
ment of  the  manners  is  elsewhere  to  be  sought 
than  at  the  hands  of  M.  Martinet,  the  dancing- 
master  ? 


MODEEN  SOCIETY. 


45 


Wliile  something  nevei-theless,  may  in  fairneBS 
be  conceded  liere  to  the  dance,  a  very  httle  ol> 
Bervation  accompanied  with  a  very  little  re- 
flection vnll,  I  think,  suffice  to  convince  a  can- 
did mind  that  the  institution  is  hardly  all,  even 
in  this  respect,  that  is  claimed  for  it  by  its  more 
enthusiastic,  and  especially  its  professional,  dev- 
otees. It  is  certainly  a  service  to  the  social 
interests  of  men,  if  the  dance  does  help  to  create 
that  unselfishness  between  person  and  person, 
which  morahty  enjoins  upon  us  all  as  politeness, 
or  even  to  create  that  affectation  of  this,  which 
we  are  all  of  us  so  well  content  to  accept  in- 
stead of  poHteness.  This  is  the  element  in 
which  mutual  intercourse  must  be  transacted,  if 
it  is  to  be  a  source  either  of  pleasure  or  of  profit, 
I  would  be  the  last  to  deny  the  debt,  if  the 
dance  can  show  that  it  does  indeed  supply  such 
a  neutral  condition  of  lubricity  to  the  agreeable 
mingling  of  people  in  society,  without  at  the 
same  time  overbalancing  its  credit  with  deduc- 
tions chargeable  on  this  very  score. 

What  is  the  true  state  of  the  case  ?  There 
is,  to  my  mind,  something  fairly  august  in  the 


46 


THE   DANCE  OF 


arrogant  self-assertion  of  the  dance.  It  awes 
one — it  takes  away  one's  breath — one  .^s  uncer- 
tam  for  a  moment  or  two  in  its  presence  whether 
his  first  principles  of  courtesy  and  good  breed- 
ing may  not,  by  some  hocus-pocnSj  have  got  ex- 
actly reversed  without  his  being  aware  of  it. 
This  social  amusement  flouts  you  with  such 
utterly  pitiless,  such  Gorgonizing  insolence, 
Staring  right  on  with  calm,  eternal  eyes, 

— if  you  happen  to  get  into  its  way!  Until 
you  recover  your  self-possession,  you  rather  be- 
hove that  it  must  mysteriously  be  in  accordance 
with  everlasting  principles  of  politeness  that 
you  should  be  flouted.  You  are  in  the  unenvi- 
able condition  of  that  morbidly  modest  man, 
whom  Robert  Hall  describes  as  seeming  by  his 
manner  to  be  asking  pardon  of  everybody  for 
taking  the  Hberty  to  exist.  I  have  seen  a  good 
many  people  who  never  rally  from  this  uncom- 
fortable hallucination  in  the  presence  of  the 
dance.  The  dance  plants  one  foot  of  its  unlim- 
itedly  expansible  compasses  in  a  parlor,  and 
thence  widening  its  sweep,  room  by  room,  grad- 
ually and  serenely  encircles  the  entire  area  of 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


47 


the  house  that  is  open  to  guests.  Happy  then 
the  mortals  who  do  not  dance,  if  they  can  find 
a  secure  retreat  in  hall  or  entry.  Those  who 
shrink  into  corners,  and  those  who  desperately 
cling  to  the  walls,  shall  not  escape  a  whisk  of 
the  tumultuous  dress,  or  a  thrust  of  the  impor- 
tunate elbow,  to  disturb  the  serenity  of  their 
meditations  on  the  graceful  elegance  of  this  ex- 
tremely social  amusement.  That  grave  China- 
man, who  gazed  with  the  well-schooled  wondei 
of  a  Celestial  on  the  spectacle  of  the  dance  as 
exhibited  by  a  company  of  Europeans,  betrayed 
his  innocent  ignorance  of  the  real  fascination 
of  the  thing,  but  he  certainly  discovered  its 
utter  hollowness,  regarded  merely  as  a  social 
enjoyment,  when  he  asked,  "  Pray,  why  do  you 
not  let  your  servants  do  that  for  you ! "  Is  the 
fact  that  the  dance  lubricates  the  individual 
manners,  or  that  its  introduction  breaks  the  ice 
of  first  reserve  which  embarrasses  the  freedom 
of  an  evening's  company ; — giving  conversation 
forsooth  such  a  launch  that  it  is  dispensed  with 
from  that  moment  forward  —  is  this  two-fold 
fact,  admitted,  a  fair  offset  to  the  gi*oss,  the 


48 


THE    DANCE  OF 


e^egioTis  ill-manners  upon  which  1  haT  e  com- 
naonted  ?  It  must  be  added  that  provident  and 
resourceful  hostesses  guard  against  such  abuse 
of  their  hospitality  by  assigning  one  side  of  the 
house  to  those  who  trip  it  as  they  go,  and  the 
other  to  those  who  prefer  to  preserve  postures 
of  stable  equilibrium — that  is  to  say,  by  virtu- 
ally making  two  parties  at  once. 

I  remember  hearing  the  celebrated  M.  Bau- 
tain,  in  one  of  his  lectiu*es  at  the  Sorbonne  on 
some  subject  of  theology,  going  aside  from  his 
main  discussion,  lament  the  decline  in  France 
of  the  art  of  conversation.  Bon  vivant  he  ap- 
peared in  his  redundant  physique^  and  it  was 
almost  whimsical  to  hear  him  attribute  the  mis- 
fortune to  the  habit  of  after-dinner  smoking — a 
habit  against  which  nothmg  about  the  lecturer 
himself  seemed  to  protest  along  with  his  words, 
except  his  interdictory  quality  of  Eomish  ec- 
clesiastic. He  thought  that  the  post-prandial 
cigar,  banishing  men  from  the  influence  sup- 
posed to  rain  from  ladies'  eyes  at  jousts  of  wit 
as  well  as  of  arms,  and  enveloping  them  in  a 
haze  of  oblivious  torpor — had  chilled  the  genial 


MODERX  SOCIETY. 


49 


currents  of  that  conversational  enthusiasm 
which  once  made  the  table-talk  of  Frenchmen 
the  admiration  of  cultivated  Europe. 

Now  it  may  well  be  that  what  might  be  called 
the  high  art  of  conversation,  such,  for  example, 
as  created  the  nurturing  atmosphere  for  a  pro- 
duction like  the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Ta- 
hle^  is  not  materially  injured  by  the  dance  :  for 
however  much  the  literary  magicians  may  pa- 
tronize the  exercise  as  a  matter  of  aesthetics,  or 
approve  it  as  a  matter  of  morals,  they  can 
hardly  be  imagined  very  sedulous  devotees  of  it 
as  a  matter  of  practice :  but  assuredly,  had  ]\t 
Bautain  spoken  from  the  point  of  view  of  av- 
erage American  society,  he  would  have  been 
nearer  the  truth  in  representing  conversation,  as 
a  diifused  and  popular  accomplishment,  to  be 
m  danger  of  extinction  from  the  usurping  do- 
minion of  the  dance. 

IV.  I  have  now,  in  immediate  sequence  to 
the  foregoing,  to  investigate  the  influence  of  the 
dance  on  th  3  Intellectual  Improvement  of  Soci^- 
Cfty. 

4 


50 


THE    DANCE  OF 


Chir  American  life  is,  from  the  virtual  com- 
pulsion of  circumstances,  so  much  absorbed  in 
attention  to  material  interests  that  as  a  people 
we  have  little  time,  at  tiie  best,  to  devote  to  the 
interior  culture  of  ourselves.  Literature  and 
art,  books,  pictures,  and  the  other  various  ob- 
jects of  elegant  taste,  these  truly  rational  top- 
ics of  interest  to  enlightened  minds,  have  the 
very  narrowest  chance,  even  with  earnest  in- 
tentions on  our  part,  to  produce  their  elevating 
and  chastening  effect  upon  our  Hves.  Is  it  not 
shame  to  us  that  the  golden  hours,  all  too  few, 
in  which  we  might  exchange  with  each  other 
the  thoughts  inspired  by  themes  hke  these,  to 
our  mutual  profiting,  should  be  recklessly  squan- 
dered upon  a  laborious  bodily  exercise,  in  which 
monkeys  might  be  trained  to  display  greater 
agihty  than  we,  and  bears  a  statelier  gravity  ? 

What  a  confession  for  our  young  men  and 
young  women  to  make  that  they  find  it  impos- 
sible to  get  an  evening's  company  to  go  ofi*  well 
without  the  dance !  IIow  much  mental  vacuity 
—what  aching  and  echoing  cranial  room  for 
knowledge — does  such  a  ( onfession  imply  1 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


51 


Oh,  young  men !  Oh,  yc/ung  women !  Ame- 
rican brothers  and  sisters,  say, — would  it  not  be 
better  if  yon  should  create  and  sustain  courses 
of  lectures  for  some  of  your  winter  evenings — 
if  you  should  patronize  the  circulating  libraries, 
or  even  the  book-stores — if  you  should  sub- 
scribe to  some  of  the  literary  periodicals  (but 
you  will  have  to  wait  now  until  you  lecome  a 
public  fit  to  support  them,  before  you  can  find 
many  very  good  at  home) — if  you  should  or- 
ganize reading-clubs,  and  amateur  art  associa- 
tions— in  short,  if  you  should  spend  a  share  at 
least  of  the  time  and  of  the  money  that  you 
can  command,  in  acquunng  such  resources  of 
mind,  that  you  would  not  be  obliged  to  whirl 
each  other  off"  into  a  dance  when  you  assemble 
for  an  evening  together,  lest  forsooth  you  should 
not  be  able  to  think  of  anything  to  say,  to  re- 
lieve the  awkardness  of  silence?  I  am  met 
with,j  "  Better  to  dance  than  to  talk  and  slan- 
der your  neighbors  ?"  |  True,  but  so  perhaps  it 
is  better  to  steal  than  to  commit  murder.  But 
*hose  who  refrain  from  stealing  are  not  there 
fore  obliged  to  commit  murder.    And  those 


52 


THE    DAXCE  OF 


wliO  refrain  from  dancing  are  not  obKged  to 
alander  their  neighbors.  There  is  conversation 
which  neither  abuses  the  absent,  nor  yet  in- 
jures the  participants  in  it.  But  the  art  of 
Buch  conversation  is  indeed  far  gone  towards 
being  lost  to  a  generation  that  will  frisk,  like 
Donatello,  and  fly  into  the  dance,  to  dodge  a 
fair  and  friendly  encounter  of  mind  with  mind. 

I  am  aware  that  it  may  be  replied :  "  What 
we  want  is  amusement.  The  mental  activity 
you  are  recommending  is  not  recreation."  A 
sound  philosophy  of  recreation  would  require, 
that  those  portions  of  our  complex  organism 
which  are  wearied  should  be  permitted  to  rest, 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  those  which  have  been 
left  comparatively  unemployed  should  at  the 
same  time  be  brought  into  play.  Now  how 
many  of  onr  young  people  in  ordinary  society, 
exert  their  minds  so  strenuously,  that  their 
health  demands  a  period  of  mental  repose  ?  By 
all  means  let  such  relax  the  excessive  strain. 
But  assuredly  those  who  find  it  out  of  the  ques- 
tion to  make  an  evening's  entertainment  pass 
off  respectably  without  introducing  the  dance 


MODERN  SOCIETY, 


53 


to  take  tlie  place  of  conversation,  will  not  elaun 
to  be  of  the  number.  No;  the  people  who 
compose  society  are  rather,  if  they  but  knew  it, 
fairly  tired  to  death  with  everlasting  amuse- 
ment. It  is  their  business  to  seek  pleasure,  and 
no  merchant  pushes  his  traffic  harder.  It  would 
be  positive  recreation  to  these  devotees  of  so- 
ciety, if  they  would  set  themselves  at  some 
work  tliat  should  bring  their  languishing  minds 
into  action.  And  then  the  clerks,  for  example,  ' 
who  are  on  their  feet  all  day,  in  a  confined  at- 
mospliere — is  it  not  too  severe  a  jocularity  to 
call  it  recreation,  for  these  leg-weary  mortals  to 
dance  most  of  the  night,  as  if  their  hope  of  use- 
fulness depended  upon  their  assiduity  in  it  ?  Is 
it  not  clear  that  what  such  young  men  need  for 
diversion,  is  something  to  employ  their  minds, 
on  matters  aside  from  business,  while  their  tired 
muscular  system  refreshes  itself  with  rest?  Due 
mental  exercise  is  perhaps  as  essential  to  healtli 
as  is  exercise  of  the  body. 

But  I  have  said  enough  on  these  minor 
topics  of  my  discussion.  The  chief  topic  still 
remains  to  be  discussed.    I  have  expressed  my* 


54 


THE    DANCE  OF 


self  with  severity;  but  my  readers  will  surely 
Buffer  me  to  be  a  little  out  of  humor  with  a 
usurpation,  which  tyrannizes  to  such  disastrous 
purpose,  over  so  fair  a  realm  of  human  life. 

V.  I  come  finally  to  the  consideration  of  the 
dance  in  its  moral  aspects.    I  use  the  word 

moral,"  without  designing  to  distinguish  it 
from  religious."  I  am  of  the  number  of  those 
who  believe  that  morality,  rightly  conceived  of, 
is  the  same  thing  as  religion,  rightly  conceived 
of.  If  the  dance  then  is  consistent  with  pure 
morality,  it  is  also  consistent  with  true  religion. 
If  it  is  a  proper  amusement  for  the  world,  it 
equally  a  proper  amusement  for  the  church.  If 
it  is  morally  suitable  for  the  irreligious  young 
man  who  hears  a  sermon,  to  dance,  it  is  likewise 
morally  suitable  for  the  minister  who  preaches 
the  sermon,  to  dance  at  his  side.  The  question 
remains  now  to  be  considered,  the  dance  jus- 
tifiable on  moral  grounds  ? 

When  the  dance  is  accused,  as  I  have  accused 
it,  of  being  injurious  to  the  health,  of  breeding 
extravagance  in  expenditure,  of  hindering  so- 
cial enjoyment  and  profit^  and  of  dissipating 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


55 


tlie  opportunities  of  intellectual  improven.ent, 
tlie  rejoinder  is  commonly  made  that  at  least  it 
is  in  itself  an  innocent,  if  not  a  useful  way  of 
spen  ding  the  evening  hours.  "  Besides  it  is  de- 
lightful," say  enthusiastic  young  ladies.  We 
take  no  note  of  time,  when  we  dance,  and  are 
conscious  of  no  fatigue.  The  music  moves  us 
almost  without  our  effort.  It  is  actually  easier 
to  dance,  when  the  fiddle  is  going,  than  it  is  to 
keep  still."  Well,  if  this  be  so,  useless  as  it 
seems  in  a  utilitarian  point  of  view,  and  fatal 
to  self-culture,  still,  if  it  be  so  indescribably  de- 
lightful, and  at  the  same  time  not  positively  in- 
jurious to  good  morals^  why  I,  for  my  part, 
say.  By  all  means  dance  and  have  a  fine  time. 
Pity — pity,  to  be  sure,  that  you  have  not  whole- 
some earnestness  enough,  in  some  worthy  direc- 
tion, to  make  the  frivolity  distasteful ;  but  if  you 
have  not,  then  there  is  probably  nothing  better 
for  you,  than  to  resemble  those  natives  on  the 
toast  of  Africa,  of  whom  it  is  related  that  they 
begged  their  musical  European  visitor  to  cease 
fiddling,  lest  they  perforce  danced  themselves  i 
to  death.  But  is  the  dance  morally  unobjec- 
tionable ? 


56 


THE   DANCE  OF 


I  have,  it  is  true,  in  part  forestalled  my  reply. 
For  it  would  be  strictly  legitimate  to  enlarge 
on  the  vicious  tendencies  always  engendered  by 
such  extravagant  expenditure  as  the  dance  en- 
courages, and  almost  requires,  upon  the  sordid 
ambition  it  inspires  to  outshine  one's  social 
peers,  and  the  low  pride  begotten  by  success 
among  those  victorious  in  this  barbaric  rivalry, 
with  the  consequent  chagrin,  and  heart-buming, 
and  secret  jealousy,  that  follow  in  the  breasts  of 
the  disappointed,  upon  its  deplorable  eflect  in 
bounding  the  personal  aspiration  to  exterior 
elegance  in  looks,  and  dress,  and  manners — it 
would  be  legitimate,  I  say,  in  settling  the  mora 
propriety  of  the  usage  in  question,  to  dwell  on 
these  things,  and  I  might  use  unstinted  free- 
dom of  language  respecting  them.  But  serious 
as  they  are,  they  by  no  means  constitute  the 
gravamen  of  the  indictment  which  I  bring 
against  the  dance  as  enemy  to  public  morality. 
There  are  graver  moral  considerations  still,  in- 
volved in  the  subject,  to  which  I  desire  my 
readers  to  give  their  thoughtful  attention 
These  considerations,  however,  are  such,  thai 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


57 


though  they  move  my  feeling  to  the  highest 
pitch  of  moral  indignation,  I  nevertheless  must 
pick  my  expressions  with  the  utmost  care,  lest 
I  offend  the  decorum  which  the  chaste  spirit  0/ 
Christian  refinement  has  taught  us  to  observK^ 
and  to  demand  in  speech.  There  is  an  infinite 
slough  of  pollution,  but  scantily  crusted  over, 
under  your  feet  now,  whichever  way  you  turn,. 

Incedis  per  io^nes 
Suppositos  ciiaeri  doloso. 

Alas,  that  the  fatal  faux  pas^  which  lets  the 
adventurer  down,  is  so  much  more  frequently 
taken  in  the  actual  experience  of  Kfe,  than  in 
terms  of  allusion  by  speech  ! 

The  dance,  then,  to  say  it  at  once,  and  plain- 
ly, is  an  immoral  amusement,  immoral  I  mean 
in  itself.  Of  course  I  am  not  now  traversing 
the  statement  with  which  I  set  out,  that  danc- 
ing in  itself  is  perfectly  innocent.  This  I  as- 
sert again.  But  I  must  remind  my  readers 
that  dancing  in  itself  is  not  under  discussion. 
I  am  dealing  with  a  very  different  affair  indeed 
— a  concrete  thing,  a  substance  with  accidents^ 


58 


THE   DANCE  OF 


say  ratlier  a  substance  whose  essence  consists  in 
its  accidents — a  social  institution,  well-deter- 
mined in  form,  and  liitherto  as  persistent  as 
force — or  as  sin — I  am  dealing  with  the  dance. 
Now  dancing  does  certainly  occur  in  the  dance 
— but  so  does  breathing ;  and  one  comes  just 
as  near  constituting  the  dance  as  the  other. 

I  shall  seem  paradoxical  to  many,  and  I  will 
explain.  In  a  single  word,  dancing  is  one 
thing  and  the  dance  is  another.  The  dance  is 
dancing  under  certain  conditions  well  under- 
stood. The  dance,  by  reason  of  these  constant 
conditions,  is  an  amusement  immoral  in  itself. 
Dancing  is  an  exercise  which  may  be  perfectly 
harmless.  I  should  have  no  objection  in  the 
world  to  a  dance  in  which  the  only  participants 
were  children  too  young  to  be  conscious  of  sex, 
and  necessarily  incapable  of  any  pleasure  in  it, 
except  that  of  associated  and  rhythmical  mo- 
tion. Boys  and  girls  might  knit  hands  and  beat 
the  ground  together  in  it  to  their  hearts'  con- 
tent, just  as  they  might  romp  together  in  field 
or  wood.  (As  a  point  of  hygiene,  and  of  aes- 
thetic even,  I  should  generally  insist  that  it  be 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


59 


the  ground  they  beat,  and  not  a  floor,  much  less 
a  carpeted  floor.)  I  should  have  no  objection 
to  a  dance  in  which  the  participants  were  exclu- 
sively males,  of  whatever  age,  or  to  one  in 
which  the  participants  were  exclusively  females, 
of  whatever  age.  I  should  have  no  objection 
to  a  dance  in  which  the  participation  was  con- 
fined to  the  brothers  and  sisters  of  one  liouse- 
liold,  and  the  parents  and  grandparents,  for  that 
matter,  if  they  liked,  might  join  in  it  with  the 
utmost  propriety.  This  style  of  parlor  danc- 
ing'^ I  would  cheerfully  permit  if  I  were  the 
Solon  of  society.  But  I  should  be  Draconian 
enough  to  exclude  neighbors'  children,  intimate 
friends  and  cousins  of  every  degree — as  long  at 
least  as  hiunan  nature  continues  such  that  these 
marry  and  are  given  in  marriage  with  each 
other.  These  might,  to  be  sure,  be  present  and 
witness  the  Terpsichorean  performances  of  the 
family ;  but  I  am  afraid  that  the  mere  spectacle 
of  such  domestic  fehcity  would  be  voted  a 
rather  tame  entertainment.  In  fact,  such  is 
human  depravity,  I  have  my  misgi\dngs  that 
the  older  brothers  and  sisters  of  the  household 


60 


THE    DANCE  OP 


would  almost  as  lief  go  back  to  their  Sunda^y- 
school  as  to  engage  in  so  entirely  innocent  a 
diversion. 

Upon  condition  that  the  prevaihng  moral 
tone  of  society  were  such  as  to  keep  the  dance 
strictly  within  these  limits,  I  would  enter  into 
bonds  to  be  the  very  last  to  wag  a  tongue 
against  it.  I  seriously  suspect,  however,  that 
this  "  peculiar  institution"  of  society,  so  circum- 
scribed, would  follow  the  example  of  American 
slavery  and  refuse  to  survive  its  indignation  at  tlie 
insult  of  being  kept  within  impassable  bounds. 

It  would  be  the  extreme  of  narrowness  not 
to  admit,  as  I  cheerfully  do,  that  the  limits  thus 
laid  down  for  the  perfectly  safe  circumscription 
of  the  dance,  might  be  enlarged  a  little  now 
and  then  without  serious  risk.  I  have  seen 
companies  assembled  much  more  promiscuous 
in  their  composition  than  those  described  above, 
in  which  I  veritably  think,  nevertheless,  that 
the  evil  likely  to  arise  from  a  brief  indulgence 
in  the  dance  would  be  quite  infinitesimal  in 
amount.  But  this  admission,  made  in  the  ut- 
most good  faith,  really  concedes  nothing  of  any 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


61 


practical  value.  The  trouble  is,  tliat  beyond 
these  liraits  a  vigilant  discrimination  of  per- 
sons proper  to  be  included  would  be  necessary. 
This  discrimination  would  be  extremely  diffi- 
cult often  in  thought,  and  it  would  be  infinitely 
delicate  in  fact.  Besides,  there  is  nobody  to 
make  the  discrimination.  It  would  involve  on 
many  occasions  the  exercise  of  a  very  invidious 
censorship  over  the  moral  character  of  youi 
neighbors  and  acquaintances — a  censorship  so 
invidious  that  it  would  never  be  undertaken. 
Suppose,  for  instance,  your  family,  enlivened  by 
the  casual  dropping  in  of  the  neighbor  next 
door  on  one  side,  an  unexceptionable  man,  hap- 
pened to  be  chasing  the  glowing  hours  of  an 
evening  with  flying  feet.  The  parlor  dancing," 
often  so  stoutly  contended  for,  is  usually  de- 
scribed as  springing  up  spontaneously  in  some 
such  unceremonious  way.  So  far  I  acknowledge 
the  harm  is  purely  theoretical — probably.  But 
while  this  is  in  progress,  the  neighbor  next  door 
on  the  other  side  calls  too,  in  no  wise  conscious 
of  the  music  and  dancing,  but  led  simply  by  a 
spirit  in  his  feet.    Everybody  knows  that  next- 


62 


THE   DANCE  OF 


door  neighbors  are  always  the  best  of  neigh- 
bors, but,  unhappily,  not  always  the  most  irre- 
proachable of  men.  This  second  caller  is  not 
beyond  reproach.  But  that  does  not  prevent 
his  being  fond  of  the  dance,  and  being,  more- 
over, a  very  graceful  dancer.  What  is  to  be 
done  ?  Shall  the  dance  stop  ?  But  if  it  does 
not,  where  is  your  principle  of  discrimination? 
It  is  an  impossible  discrimination,  or  so  difficult 
that  if  faithfully  applied,  the  dance  would  soon 
die  a  natural  death.  It  would  not  seem  worth 
the  trouble  of  keeping  it  alive.  I  desire,  how- 
ever, to  make  it  distinctly  understood,  that  to 
such  hypothetical  cases  of  dancing  as  have  thus 
been  described,  the  severe  language  which  will 
follow,  both  in  the  text  and  in  the  notes,  is  not 
intended  to  apply. 

But  at  this  point  some  one,  beginning  reluct- 
antly to  feel  the  truth  of  my  remarks,  demurs, 
^'What  new  asceticism  have  we  here?  The 
principle  you  imply  would  separate  the  sexes 
equally,  in  every  other  species  of  social  inter- 
course. If  mutual  consciousness  of  sex  is  the 
circumstance  which  makes  it  immoral  for  men 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


63 


and  women  to  dance  with  each  other,  then  how 
is  it  not  also  immoral  for  them  ever  to  talk  with 
each  other,  since  this  troublesome  consciousness 
is  likely  at  any  moment  to  intervene  between 
them  ?  Is  it  not  rather  the  rational,  and  pre- 
eminently the  Christian,  philosophy  of  the  rela- 
tion of  man  and  woman  that  they  should  recog- 
nize and  enjoy  the  exquisite  sense  of  difference, 
put  fi'om  the  beginning  between  them  to  create 
the  possibility  of  that  transcendent  affection 
whose 

dearest  bond  is  this, 
Not  like  to  like,  but  like  in  difference. 

Is  not  this  the  common  sense  of  the  subject  ? 

I  certainly  think  that  it  is.  And  it  is  pre- 
cisely because  I  would  guard  this  most  dehcate 
bloom  of  all  human  delight  from  the  gross  and 
common  handling  which  soils  its  purity,  that  I 
use  the  language  I  do.  Can  we  forget  that  it  is 
the  best  use  which  is  liable  to  the  worst  abuse  ? 
Do  we  not  know  that  the  relation  of  the  sexes, 
which  was  to  .have  overflowed  the  world  as  a 
fountain  of  Paradise,  has  been  perverted  into 
the  prolific  cause  of  more  crime  and  miserj^ 


64 


THE   DANCE  OF 


thai .  any  other  single  thing  that  can  be  named  \ 
And  shall  I  not  cry  shame  upon  a  usa^e  that, 
under  cover  of  respectability,  regularly  titillates 
and  tantalizes  an  animal  appetite  as  insatiable 
as  hmiger,  more  cruel  than  revenge  ? 

My  accusation  is  that  the  dance,  instead  of 
affording  an  opportunity  for  mutually  ennobli^ig 
companionship  between  man  and  woman,  in- 
spired with  a  chaste  and  sweet  interfused  re- 
membrance of  their  contrasted  relationship  to 
each  other — that  the  dance,  instead  of  this, 
consists  substantially  of  a  system  of  means  con- 
trived with  more  than  human  ingenuity  to  ex- 
cite the  instincts  of  sex  to  action,  however 
\  subtle  and  disguised  at  the  moment,  in  its  sequel 
'the  most  bestial  and  degrading.    I  charge  that 
here,  and  not  elsewhere,  in  the  anatomy  of  that 
elusive  fascination  which  belongs  so  peculiarly 
to  the  dance,  the  scalpel  is  laid  upon  the  quiver- 
.  ing  secret  of  life.    Passion — passion  transform 
/  ed  if  you  please  never  so  much,  subsisting  in 
!  no  matter  how  many  finely  contrasted  degrees 
\  of  sensuality — passion,  and  nothing  else  is  tho 
\jrue  basis  of  the  popularity  of  the  dance. 


MODERN    SOCIETY.  65 

I  shiiiik  almost  uncontrollably  from  this  state- 
ment, now  that  I  have  made  it ;  and  many  times 
since  I  first  assumed  so  bold  a  position  I  have 
been  tempted  to  recede  from  it,  overborne  by  the 
aj'guments,  and  still  more  by  the  sweet  personal 
magnetism  of  friends  of  my  own  sex  whose  for^ 
tunate  individual  exemption  from  infirmity  dis- 
qualifies them  from  allowing  that  my  views  are 
other  than  Pmitanic,  or  at  least  morally  "  dys- 
peptic." It  is  not  pleasant  to  be  a  voice  crying 
in  the  wilderness.  Still  less  is  it  pleasant  to  be 
sent  to  Nineveh  on  an  errand  of  Jonah.  I  am 
60  far  influenced  as  to  admit  that  there  must  be 
numerous  instances  of  exception  to  the  general 
rule.  But  tlie  general  rule,  and  not  the  excep- 
tions, should  determine  our  line  of  conduct.  It 
is  a  case  so  peculiar  that  the  exceptions  cannot 
safely  be  admitted  even  to  exercise  an  influence 
in  determining  our  line  of  conduct.  On  the 
other  hand,  too,  I  think  it  right  to  say  that 
since  the  first  publication  of  my  views,  I  have 
received  volunteer  testimony  from  so  many 
quarters,  and  from  quarters  representing  such 
diametric  diversitv  of  moral  and  social  charao- 
6 


66 


THE   DANCE  OF 


ter  and  position,  corroborative  of  them  from 
experience^  that  I  find  it  impossible  to  qualify 
them  now  by  a  single  degree.  One  man  in 
particular,  my  acquaintance  with  whom,  com 
menced  in  the  earliest  boyhood,  and  uninter- 
rupted since,  permits  an  unreserve  of  expression 
between  us  such  as  is  seldom  incident  to  later- 
formed  acquaintanceship,  has  emphatically  con- 
fessed to  me  his  wonder  that  a  person  who  never 
danced  himself  should  have  been  able  so  plainly 
and  fully  to  tell  the  truth  about  dancing.  And 
no  man  knows  what  the  whole  of  the  truth 
about  it  is  better  than  he.  Nor  let  it  be  sup- 
posed that  I  commit  so  vulgar  an  error  as  that  of 
attaching  undue  weight  to  the  testimony  of  one 
likely  to  have  projected  his  own  moral  charac- 
ter upon  the  innocent  companionship  of  his 
guilty  pleasure.  If  it  were  proper  to  do  so, 
even  in  this  anonymous  way,  I  could  cite  an 
equally  striking  corroborative  expression,  con- 
veyed to  me  through  an  unquestionable  medium, 
from  one  whom  I  never  met,  but  who,  at  eve^n/ 
pointy  save  common  experience  in  dancing,  is 
in  the  most  antipodal  contrast  to  the  witness 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


67 


just  nientioned.    I  am  forced  to  conclude  that  \ 
the  devotees  of  the  dance  differ  among  them- 
selves, not  so  much  in  the  influence  received 
from  participation  in  it  as  in  their  intelligent 
consciousness  of  that  influence. 

It  is  no  accident  that  the  dance  is  what  it  is. 
It  mingles  the  sexes  in  such  closeness  of  person- 
al approach  and  contact  as,  outside  of  the  dance, 
is  nowhere  tolerated  in  respectable  society.  It 
does  this  under  a  complexity  of  circumstances 
that  conspire  to  heighten  the  impropriety  of  it. 
It  is  evening  and  the  hour  is  late,  there  is  the 
delicious  intoxication  of  music  and  motion,  ^^r- 
haps  of  wine,  in  the  blood,  there  is  the  strange, 
confusing  sense  of  being  individually  unob- 
served among  so  many,  while  yet  the  natural 
"noble  shame,"  which  guards  the  purity  of  man 
and  woman  alone  together,  is  absent — such  ib 
the  occasion,  and  still,  hour  after  hour,  the 
dance  whirls  its  giddy  kaleidoscope  around, 
bringing  hearts  so  near  that  they  almost  beat 
against  each  other,  mixing  the  warm,  mutual 
breaths,  darting  the  fine  personal  electricity 
across  between  the  meeting  fingers,  flushing  the 


68 


THE   DANCE  OF 


face  and  lighting  the  eyes  with  a  quick  lan- 
guage^ subject  often  to  gross  interpretations  on 
the  part  of  the  vile-hearted — why,  this  fashion- 
able institution  seems  to  me  to  have  been  in- 
vented in  an  unfriendly  quarter,  usually  con- 
ceived of  as  situated  under  us,  to  give  our 
human  passions  leave  to  disport  themselves,  un- 
reproved  by  conscience,  by  reason,  or  by  shame, 
almost  at  their  wilL  I  will  not  trust  myself  to 
speak  of  this  further.  My  indignation  waxes 
hotter  than  can  w^ell  be  controlled,  I  even 
seem  to  myself  to  have  contracted  some  soil 
from  having  merely  described  truthfully  what 
thousands  of  fellow-Christians,  ignorant  of 
themselves,  practice  without  swallowing  a 
qualm  !* 


*  Witli  fhe  sincerest  reluctance,  I  bring  myself  to  sub- 
join  a  remark  bearing  on  this  point,  once  overheard  on  car- 
board  by  a  friend  of  mine,  in  a  conversation  that  was 
passing  between  two  young  men  about  their  lady  ac- 
quaintances. The  horrible  concreteness  of  the  fellow's 
expression  may  give  a  wholesome  recoil  from  their  danger 
to  some  minds  that  would  be  little  affected  by  a  specula- 
tive statement  of  the  same  idea.    Said  one :  "  I  would  not 

give  a  straw  to  dance  with  Miss  .    You  can't  excite 

any  more  passion  ir  her  than  you  can  in  a  stick  of  wood !" 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


69 


I  say  that  the  dance  is  not  fortuitously  such. 
It  is  such  essentially.  Its  real  nature  is  shown 
by  what  it  constantly  tends  to  become,  in  new 
figures,  introduced  stealthily,  from  time  to  time, 
(under  silent  protest  from  many  who  suffer  their 
modesty  to  be  overborne  by  the  fear  of  being 
charged  with  prudery)  a  little  more  doubtfid 
than  the  old,  and  in  wanton  whirls,  like  the 
waltz  and  the  polka.  Always  the  dance  inclines 
to  multiply  opportunities  of  physical  proximity 

Pure  young"  women  of  a  warmer  temperament,  that  inno- 
cently abandon  themselves  to  enthusiastic  proclamations 
of  their  de  ight  in  the  dance  in  the  presence  of  gentle- 
men, shou'd  but  barely  once  have  a  male  intuition  of  the 
meaning  of  the  involuntary  glance  that  will  often  shoot 
across  from  eye  to  eye  among  their  auditors.    Or  they 
ehou'd  overhear  the  comments  exchanged  among  them 
afterwards.    For  when  young  men  meet  after  an  evening 
of  the  dance  to  talk  it  over  together,  it  is  not  points  of 
dress  they  discuss.    Their  on'y  demand,  and  it  is  gener- 
\  ally  conceded,  is  that  ladies'  dress  shall  not  needlessly  em- 
\  barrass  suggestion.    Believe  me,  however  women  escape 
Without  the  smell  of  fire  upon  their  garments,  men  often 
^do  not  get  out  of  the  furnace,  save  with  a  flame  devouring 
them,  that  they  seek  strange  fountains,  and  willingly 
damn  their  souls  to  quench. 

It  tasks  a  resolutely  firm  nerve  to  speak  thus  of  things 
that  braze  it  out  before  the  world  and  the  church,  only  foi 
want  of  ])eing  thus  spoken  of. 


70 


THE    DANCE  OF 


and  contact  between  the  sexes,  always  to  make 
tliem  more  prolonged  and  more  daring.  In 
fine,  the  dance  adds  that  last  ingredient  of  per- 
fect bliss,  w^hose  absence  the  witty  French- 
woman bethought  herself,  in  the  midst  of  some 
innocent  enjoyment,  to  mourn — w^ith  a  pathos 
more  pathetic  than  they  dream  who  see  nothing 
but  a  whimsical  humor  in  the  saying — "  Man 
Dim!  how  dehghtful  this  is!  It  would  be 
quite  perfect,  if  there  w^ere  only  a  little  sin 
in  it." 

But  if  w^hat  has  already  been  said  and  sug- 
gested fails  to  convince  any  that  my  analysis 
of  the  pleasure  of  the  dance  is  true,  I  have  a 
little  problem  to  propose  for  their  solution: 
Why  is  it  that  the  dance  alone^  of  all  the  favor- 
ite diversions  of  gay  society^  requires  the  asso- 
ciation of  the  two  sexes  in  it  f  The  problem  is 
not  solved  by  the  ready  reply,  ""Why,  the 
pleasure  of  social  intercourse  is  always  heighlr 
ened  when  both  sexes  participate  in  it.  AVe 
enjoy  an  evening  of  cards  the  better  for  this 
piquant  commingling Bnt  you  have  missed 
the  pMnt  of  the  problem.    The  questicn  is  not. 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


71 


Why  do  you  enjoy  the  dance  more  when  men 
and  women  execute  it  together?  but,  Wliy  must 
men  and  women  execute  it  together  in  order  that 
they  should  enjoy  it  at  all  ?  No  doubt  a  game  of 
cards  may  be  much  more  bewitching,  while  not 
an  iota  more  hurtful,  for  the  meeting  of  the 
sexes  at  the  table.  But  then  cheaply  figured 
parallelograms  of  paste-board  have  charms  for 
their  devotees  of  either  sex,  which  enable  them 
to  dispense  with  the  society  of  the  other.  Men, 
young  and  old,  often  sit  the  night  out  in  bach- 
elor comaviality  around  a  card-table.  Young 
ladies,  and  sometimes  their  mammas  with  them, 
I  believe,  will  interminably  shuffle  and  deal 
far  on  into  the  hours  affectionately  called 
"  small "  by  those  who  know  how  to  make  them 
seem  so  with  revel — all  qnite  without  the  com- 
pany of  gentlemen.  But  come  to  the  dance — 
and  what  a  difference  !  Wbere  do  young  ladieg 
keep  up  their  practice  of  calisthenics  after  leav- 
ing boarding-school  ?  What  bachelor  club  ex- 
ists anywhere  that  devotes  an  evening  to  the 
dance  among  its  members  ?  Pensive  and  imag- 
inative young  ladies  might  possibly,  here  and 


73 


THE   DAKCE  OF 


there,  of  a  lonesome  evening,  seek  to  revive  a 
diluted  illusion  of  past  pleasure,  by  a  few  strict- 
ly maiden  measures  executed  with  soon  ex- 
hausted enthusiasm,  but  men  with  men — hardly  1 
— unless  perhaps  in  broad  farce  to  point  a 
whimsical  contrast.  With  reference  to  such 
a  style  of  dancing  at  least,  the  pagan  sarcasm 
of  Cicero  is  likely  long  to  retain  a  Christian 
application — Nemo  fere  saltat  sobrius^  nisi 
forte  insanit. 

The  characteristic  thus  established  as  belong- 
ing to  the  dance,  in  distinction  from  every  other 
form  of  popular  amusement,  is  full  of  instruct- 
ive implication  to  those  w^ho  are  accustomed  to 
inquire  for  the  causes  of  things.  Of  course  I 
know  how  indignantly  the  accusation  of  impur- 
ity in  their  enjoyment  of  the  dance  will  be  re- 
pelled by  the  great  majority  of  its  votaries. 
And  I  am  very  ready  to  admit  the  indignation 
as  entirely  honest ;  for  I  have  no  doubt  that  the 
element  of  uncliastity  in  it,  rarely  absent  in 
Bome  more  or  less  refined  quality  of  influence, 
I  most  certainly  believe,  is  yet  generally  unrec- 
ognized by  the  subject.    If  only  miconscioue^ 


MODERN  SOClETf, 


73 


ness  oi  evil  influence  were  a  trustworthy  pro- 
phylactic against  it !  Once  again,  and  for  all, 
I  protest  with  the  utmost  sincerity  that  I  am 
&r  from  confounding  the  devotees  of  the  dance 
in  an  indiscriminate  accusation  of  conscious  im- 
purity. I  know  too  many  pure-hearted  women 
among  dancers,  whom  no  fortunate  son,  or 
brother,  or  husband,  could  possibly  charge  with 
one  doubtful  thought,  for  even  an  instant  of  the 
most  oblivious  excitement,  not  to  be  myself  indig- 
nant in  purging  my  intention  of  any  such  cruel 
injustice.  And  in  the  opposite  sex,  too^  how- 
ever much  more  exposed  by  nature  to  tempta- 
tion, there  are  some  dancers  no  doubt  who  come 
very  near  to  escaping  the  conscious  contagion 
of  evil,  by  virtue  of  an  instinctive  chastity  in 
them,  God's  gift  to  a  few.  But,  right  on  the 
heels  of  so  wide  a  disclaimer,  I  must  re-assert 
my  conviction  that  unconsciousness  does  not  de- 
fend even  the  purest  minds  from  something  of 
the  insinuating  sensual  tendency  of  this  inhei^ 
ently  voluptuous  amusement. 

And  then  consider,  ye  Christian  fathers,  and 
brothers,  and  husbands,  to  what  horrible  haz* 


74 


THE    DANCE  OF 


ards  of  contact  tlie  opportui  jties  cf  tlie  dance 
expose  your  daughters,  and  sisters,  and  wivee. 
For  whOj  that  has  gained  any  experience  of  the 
world,  is  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  hardly  once 
does  a  considerable  party  assemble,  even  in  the 
most  respectable  society,  without  including  some 
man  whom  his  associates  know^  to  be  a  libertine 
at  heart,  if  not  in  life?  To  think  of  pui-e 
women  pastured  on,  with  ])alras  of  pollution, 
and  with  imminent  eyes  of  adultery,  by  such  a 
bull  of  Bashan,  the  evening  long,  iu  the  promis- 
cuous corral  of  the  dance !  What  better  facil- 
ities could  be  imagined  for  an  accomplished 
voluptuary  to  compass  the  capture  of  his 
P^^ey  !^  

*  I  shall  never  lose  the  impression  made  years  ago 
upon  my  mind,  in  the  chances  of  western  travel  by  pack- 
et on  the  canal,  by  hearing  a  practised  libertine  relate  his 
experience  in  the  arts  of  female  seduction.  His  master 
secret  lay,  as  he  said  with  horrid  complacency,  in  accus- 
toming his  quarry  to  the  touch  of  his  hands,  and  espec- 
ially to  the  shock  of  being  kissed.  In  this  way,  to  use 
his  own  brutal  expression,  he  "  tamed'*  the  selected  vic- 
tims of  his  villany. 

This  volume  may  possibly  penetrate  to  som6  secluded 
nook  in  the  country  where  a  superstitious  horror,  once 
re  igious,  still  bears  sway  against  the  dance,  while  yet  a 


MODERN  SOCIETY, 


75  , 


Faugh  I  In  tlie  ordinary  occasions  of  society,  a 
lady  may  let  her  sacred  intuitions  have  sonio 
play  to  guard  her  against  the  access  of  impur- 
ity in  the  uniform  of  a  gentleman.  But  it  is 
the  boast  of  the  dance  that  it  is  a  democrat  and 
a  leveller,  permitting  no  individual  caprice  to 
break  the  circuit  of  universal  equality.  You 
may  shudder  to  your  heart's  core  at  the  contact 
that  is  coming — but  the  dance  leaves  you  no 
election — you  must  take  it  when  it  comes 
Blush,  blush  henceforth  ye  Christian  women, 
when  you  are  invited  to  submit  your  persons  to 
the  uses  of  a  diversion  tliat  may  at  any  time 
choose  to  bring  you  finger-tip  to  finger-tip  with 
those  whose  touch  is  polkition,  or,  it  may  be,  en- 
circle you  in  their  arms  I  \  A  burning  blush  of 
speechless  shame  were  the  best  reply  to  the  in- 


sult of  such  an  invitation, 
an  advocate  more  eloquen 


But  I  plead  against 
than  any  individu- 


al's words.    Oh,  Fashion!   Fashion!  What 

variety  of  kissing''  plays  are  practised  in  its  stead.  In  a 
case  of  social  demoralization  like  this,  wo  could  inia^no 
how  the  dance  might  serve  a  really  useful  turn,  if  intro- 
duced as  a  temporary  stage  of  progress  towards  ultimate 
more  thorough  reform  1 


76 


THE    DANCE  OF 


power  liast  thou  to  browbeat  holy  nature,  so 
tlia.t  she  dares  not  speak  to  assert  her  sacred 
claims  against  thy  imperious  sway  1 

T  abruptly  dispatch  this  hateful  subject  with- 
out completing  the  discussion  of  it.  If  my 
readers  have  winced  at  the  exceptional  plain- 
ness of  speech  which  I  have  used,  I  beg  them" 
to  believe  that  it  has  cost  me  sincere  pangs  of 
resolution  to  use  it.  But  I  have  written  under 
duress  of  conscience  that  did  not  suffer  me  to 
shrink.  The  enghieering  skill  of  the  devil  has 
defended  the  dance  with  a  masterly  dilemma 
that  leaves  open  barely  two  alternatives  of  at- 
tack about  equally  ineligible.  You  may  either 
exhaust  your  strength  in  demonstrating  the 
minor  and  incidental  evils  of  the  usage,  in 
which  case  you  win  an  easy,  but  also  a  barren 
victory ;  or  you  must  freely  encounter  the  peril 
of  damaging  your  own  fair  fame  for  purity, 
and  deliver  your  blow  full  at  its  inherent  and 
essential  immorality.  The  author  has  deliber- 
ately chosen  the  latter  alternative.  He  can  trust 
the  honest  lieat  of  indignation  that  has  warmed 
his  words  to  take  away  the  offence  of  their  ex- 


MODERN  SOCIETY. 


T7 


treme  fidelity.  As  for  the  risk  of  being  charged 
with  bringing  the  impurity  that  he  finds — he 
contentedly  accepts  it.  It  is  a  charge  that  two 
classes  of  persons  certainly  will  not  prefer 
These  two  classess  are,  first,  those  who  know 
him,  and  secondly,  those  who  know  themaiplves. 


Lord  Byron  was  not  a  severe  moralist,  either 
m  theory  or  in  practice.  He  perhaps  did  not 
himself  waltz.  But  he  was  a  man  of  like  pas- 
sions with  his  kind,  and  he  knew  well  enough 
what  the  waltz  essentially  was.  Will  any  pm'e- 
hearted  woman  be  found  willing,  after  reading 
the  lines  that  follow,  to  share  a  dance  of  which 
Buch  lines  could  be  written  by  the  author  of 


78     THE  DANCE  OF  MODERN  SOCIETY. 


Don  Juan  ?  I  take  them  from  Byron's  poem 
entitled  "  The  Waltz :  An  Apostrophic  Hj^mn 

**  Round  all  the  confines  of  the  yielded  waist, 
The  strangest  hand  may  wander  undisplaced ; 

Thus  all  and  each,  in  movement  swift  or  slow. 
The  genial  contact  gently  undergo  ; 
Till  some  might  marvel,  with  the  modest  Turk, 
If  *  nothing  follows  all  this  palming  work  *  ? 
True,  honest  Mirza  I — you  may  trust  my  rhyme- 
Something  does  fQllow,  at  a  fitter  time  ; 
The  breast  thus  publicly  resign 'd  to  man. 
In  private  may  resist  him — if  it  can. 

"  Pronounce — if  ever  in  your  days  of  blisB 
Asmodeus  struck  so  bright  a  stroke  as  this ; 
To  leach  the  young  ideas  how  to  rise, 
Flush  in  the  cheek,  and  languish  in  the  eyes ; 
Rush  to  the  heart,  and  lighten  through  the  frame, 
With  half-told  wish  and  ill-dissembled  flame, 
For  prurient  nature  still  will  storm  the  breast— 
WTiOy  tempted  thus,  can  answer  for  the  rest  ? 

**  But  ye — who  never  felt  a  single  thought 
For  what  our  morals  are  to  be,  or  ought ; 
Who  wisely  wish  the  charms  you  view  to  reap, 
Say — would  you  make  those  beauties  quite  so  cheap  t 
Hot  from  the  hands  promiscuously  applied, 
Round  the  slight  waist,  or  down  the  glowing  side. 
Where  were  the  rapture  then  to  clasp  the  form. 
From  this  lewd  grasp  and  lawless  contact  warmf* 


/ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 


3 

0- 

12  064436923 

